


Never Felt Like Any Blessing

by twelvenervouscats (crazybeagle)



Category: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pre-Relationship, just a lot of stress, youkai curses
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-05
Updated: 2018-12-04
Packaged: 2019-06-05 18:40:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 28,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15176906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crazybeagle/pseuds/twelvenervouscats
Summary: Natsume meets his eyes, then, and the smile he gives him is faint and vaguely nauseated.“You’ve got to stop jumping into weird gusts of wind for my sake, okay?”(or, A Fic In Which A Certain Lovestruck Idiot Gets Himself Cursed By A Youkai.)For Natsume Week 2018- Day 5, Humans and Youkai.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The first of three or four parts. This was supposed to be far shorter, but it's taken on a life of its own and is 15k words and counting. I'll finish it by the end of this month if it's the death of me.

“Cursed?” Kaname blinks. “I don’t feel cursed.” 

But apparently that’s not quite the right thing to say, because Natsume looks rather like he’s just been slapped in the face. Before he can amend his words, he himself is being smacked in the nose by little white paw. 

“You  _ idiot _ .” 

Kaname abruptly finds himself staring up into Ponta’s narrowed eyes. 

“Why am I an id—”

Another paw to the face cuts him off, this one literally holding his lips shut. 

“Did you have a  _ plan,  _ flinging yourself like that between Natsume and some random youkai you couldn’t even see? You stand even less of a chance against an attack like that than he does, at least he can throw a punch sometimes.” 

Kaname winces. “I’m sorry.” It’s more directed toward Natsume than Ponta. 

“You’ve got to stop jumping into weird gusts of wind for my sake, okay?” Natsume had been staring down at it, at the spot on Kaname’s chest where his school shirt’s unbuttoned and his undershirt’s tugged down, where Kaname can only see normal, unmarked skin. Natsume meets his eyes, then, and the smile he gives him is faint and vaguely nauseated. “You got possessed that first time, and now this.” 

Kaname props himself up on an elbow, squinting down at his own chest. “Uh...I know it doesn’t really matter to say I can’t see anything, but I do feel okay. I don’t really remember hitting the ground but otherwise, I…” He gives an odd one-armed shrug. “I don’t feel weird or anything, if that’s any consolation…”

Natsume’s brows shoot up. “‘Consolation’?” He looks almost offended by the word, and a little manic, perilously close to tears or laughter or both. “ _ I’m _ not the one that got cursed, why do I need consolation?” 

“I’m sorry,” Kaname repeats, sheepish, pushing himself up the rest of the way. It’s not a lie that he feels just fine, if a bit achy from apparently having been knocked off his feet. But Natsume’s frightened, and Ponta’s angry, and neither of those things ever seem to bode well. They’d been more than halfway to school when the thing attacked, and truthfully he doesn’t remember much between walking along and answering Natsume’s questions about a trip he’d gotten to take with Dad to Kyoto a few summers back, and then suddenly lying in the dirt and blinking up at bits of pale sky through tree branches, and Natsume and Ponta having a rapid, hushed conversation off to one side. 

The spirit in question had fled already; apparently it stuck around just long enough to hurl its curse, cryptically announce that it would be back, and bolt. Kaname would have thought that that wouldn’t have been enough to determine just what the spirit was doing or what it wanted, but apparently it was plenty for Ponta. 

“It was hungry,” he says, as though it should’ve been obvious. “Natsume would’ve been breakfast if it’d had its way. It didn’t bank on missing its mark, or on me being here.

“That was why you came this morning, wasn’t it?” Natsume asks, apprehensive. “Could you sense it?”

“Something was  _ off _ , yes, but it was hard to say exactly what,” Ponta replies, with a flick of a single ear. “But it wouldn’t have been a problem if the damned thing hadn’t struck like a particularly irritating bolt of lightning. I didn’t even have the time to transform before the thing lost its nerve and bolted. If I had to guess I’d say the thing couldn’t differentiate between my own energy and yours, so it probably thought you were twice as strong and therefore tasty as you are. It would’ve wanted to strike fast before you could catch on.  _ But, _ ” Ponta levels a quick glare at Kaname. “It missed the mark, obviously, then ran away just as quick when it realized it was outnumbered. Which complicates things. I’d have gone after it if I didn’t put it past the thing to circle back around and attack the second I get separated from you.”

“It...did it say that it was coming back, though?” Natsume has a hold of Kaname’s upper arm, squeezing too hard, and Kaname doesn’t need the support to stay upright but he isn’t about to tell Natsume to let go of him when he’s so visibly shaken. “For...what?”

“For Tanuma,” Ponta says, bluntly, and Natsume winces.

Kaname frowns, trying not to let his brain pause long enough to feel dread at that. “Hang on. Why would it tell you, then? Especially if it just got scared off. Why would it want us to know it was coming back?” 

Ponta huffs. “A matter of pride, I’d say. It’s angry that it missed its target. It’s embarrassed. Tanuma’s really only slightly tastier than your average human, but even if he wasn’t I’ll bet that youkai would take him and gobble him up out of spite alone, now. Maybe grab Natsume while they’re at it, if they can.” 

Natsume’s grip is hard enough to bruise, now, and Kaname bites back a grimace. “Does it really think it can fight you, though?”

“Hm.” Ponta jumps into Kaname’s lap, then, and leans in close. “For a youkai with the power to cast something that looks this nasty, I guess it’s not unreasonable for it to think he could  _ try  _ to fight me. It’d lose, but even so.” 

“Um...what exactly about it looks nasty?” Kaname asks, cautiously, as Ponta prods at his chest a few times with a single raised paw. He doesn’t think he ought to repeat the fact that he couldn’t feel anything strange, because he got the distinct feeling that of the three of them his own opinions or observations were the least helpful right now.

“It doesn’t look familiar to me, so it’s hard to say what it will do. But it’s got a lot of power worked into it, and intent. Looks like the first thing it’s supposed to do is incapacitate the target so the caster can eat them, and I’m sure it’ll help the youkai track us down again, but in the meantime it’s not likely something like this is just going to sit there dormant. Now then,” he says, before either Kaname or Natsume has the chance to reply to that. “I’ll try something. Hold still, brat.” 

Kaname’s vision is stolen by a flash of brilliant white, and his chest  _ burns.  _

A sharp yelp escapes him, and hands are catching him before he can fall backwards. 

“Sensei,  _ stop— _ ”

Kaname finds himself with his head against Natsume’s shoulder, back flush with his chest, staring up at the leafy canopy above them and blinking back tears. 

“Well,  _ that’s  _ not going to work,” Ponta grumbles. 

“Tanuma!” Natsume’s voice is urgent and practically in his ear. He cranes his neck a little to find Natsume practically nose to nose with him, round-eyed and stricken. He’s got the look of someone who’s whole world is crashing down around his ears, Kaname thinks, vaguely. He shouldn’t ever have to look like that. 

It takes Kaname a few more seconds to catch his breath. “Ah—hah...I’m okay.” And it’s not a lie, the pain’s receding almost as quickly as it came, leaving behind nothing an odd prickling feeling in his skin. “Just...don’t do that again, please,” he adds to Ponta. 

Ponta hops down from Kaname’s lap. “Looks like the only thing to be done is find the youkai and have them lift the curse themselves,” he says, with a huff. “I barely even touched you with my power just then, just a little prod. If I force it, then you’ll die, probably. How troublesome.” 

“How do we find it?” Natsume asks. He still sounds anxious, but there’s an edge to his voice now. Kaname feels a twinge of dread in his chest; he hadn’t missed the  _ we.  _ He doesn’t want Natsume anywhere near that thing. 

“By asking around, probably. We’ll start with Hinoe, see what she can find out,” Ponta says, like the idea is very distasteful to him. “That’s probably all there is to be done. It moves too fast to be properly sniffed out. Now,” he says, butting his nose against Natsume’s discarded school bag. “Get out a pen and paper. You need to draw this thing, Natsume. We’ll see if anyone recognizes it.”

“Right,” Natsume says, resolve crystallizing in the single word, but his voice is endlessly gentle when he turns back to Kaname. “Do you think you can sit up?” 

The sketching only takes about a minute, and objectively it’s one of the more surreal things Kaname has ever experienced, sitting in dirt and fallen leaves just barely out of the line of sight of the path to school, stunned and shaky with his undershirt yanked down while Natsume does a sketch of the invisible curse on his chest. With a talking cat presiding over it all, of course.

“Oh,” Kaname says, unintelligently, when he sees the finished product. “Um. Wow.” It’s the size of Kaname’s hand, all thick jagged lines and sharp angles, and it looks somehow...angry, to him. It makes dread drop into his stomach like a chunk of ice, and the skin on his chest tingles at the sight of it. 

Natsume’s hands are shaking a bit when he hands the paper over to Ponta, but he holds them out to Kaname, gives a thin smile. “Can you stand? We’ll walk you home.” 

Kaname nods, still a bit dazed, and takes his hands. It’s not until he’s on his feet that he hesitates. “Wait...what time is it, though?” He glances at his watch. 

Natsume blinks, nonplussed. “Um. Why does it matter?”

“We’d only be a little late to first period if we left now. We’re pretty close.”

Natsume looks genuinely taken aback by this. “You’re not serious.” 

“Well…” Kaname falters, knowing the words  _ I feel fine  _ weren’t likely to get him very far. “If I tell Dad I’m feeling sick, and I’m not actually feeling sick, he’s going to know I’m lying. And then he’ll worry about what the real reason could be.” That would be doubly true if Natsume was the one to accompany him home, looking as perturbed  as he does right now. And Kaname doesn’t particularly want to alarm the people he loves any more than he already has today. 

“You...oh.” Natsume seems to deflate at this, just a bit, shoulders slumping. Because that’s a feeling Natsume knows all too well, the reluctance to worry anyone at home that in his own case borders on the extreme. “But...if you start feeling like…”

“Then I’ll go to the nurse’s office, and then they can call my dad,” Kaname says evenly. “I promise I will.” 

“It’s not  _ safe,  _ though,” he says, helplessly, and the  _ look  _ on his face almost makes Kaname want to give in right then and do whatever it’d take to make him  _ stop  _ looking like that. “Curse aside,

if something like that’s coming back for you, you need to be someplace safer, someplace that’s got some wards. There’s nothing stopping it from getting into the school to come after you.” 

And Kaname probably would have relented, then, if Ponta hadn’t spoken up. “Truth be told your school’s probably the closest safe place right now. ‘Course it’s not warded, and it’s too large a space for me to properly cast any. But if this thing’s greatest weapons are its stealth and speed, it’s not going to just waltz into a building filled with hundreds of people, even if if you are all just human children. Safety in numbers, or however it goes. It’s more likely to try to catch either one of you alone than in the middle of a classroom.”

Kaname has to fight not to visibly cringe because, oh right, it’s Natsume the thing really wants to eat, and Kaname’s little more than a homing beacon for the thing to get to him. “All the more reason for us to get going, then,” he says, abruptly.

Ponta’s already taken a few steps towards the path. He cocks his head at Natsume. “Well? The quicker you get there the quicker I can find someone to babysit the both of you from outside the building so I can go track this nuisance down and take a bite out of his hide for ruining my plans for the day.”

Kaname manages a weak grin of his own at that. “What plans, exactly?” He places a light hand on the back of Natsume’s shoulder, waits. He’s not about to make Natsume go anywhere, but Ponta’s right, the two of them being in separate, crowded classrooms with an ayakashi keeping an eye out for them would be infinitely better than being out in the open like this. Natsume looks...well. Anxious, and immensely unhappy, but he can’t deny the logic of it, so he lets himself be led. 

“Um. Your uniform looks kind of terrible,” he says, eventually, in a small voice. He reaches over, brushes gently at the spot where Kaname’s back had presumably hit the ground. 

“That so?” Kaname asks, a bit relieved--he’d much prefer Natsume to be fussing over his dirty uniform and pulling a stray bit of leaf or two of his hair than the way he’d been for the past couple minutes, casting a furtive glance over every shadow under every tree they passed, or watching Kaname like he could burst into flames at any moment. Which theoretically could happen, Kaname supposes, for all any of them knew. 

“Yeah,” Natsume says, giving Kaname’s shirt collar one last little tug in a futile attempt to get it to lie flat. “You being in Ponta’s mouth when he moved you off the path probably didn’t help that.”   
  
Ponta scoffs lightly from his place wrapped up in Natsume’s arms. “You’re welcome, brats.”

“You’ll probably get scolded by your teacher,” Natsume continues. “Sorry.” 

Kaname shrugs. “So will you, for being late. And that’s on me.” 

Natsume reaches over, yanks lightly on the strap of Kaname’s school bag, and leaves his fingers looped there. The look he gives Kaname is soft, not quite a smile but almost. “Then I guess we can be in trouble together, then.”

He doesn’t let go of Kaname’s bag for the rest of the walk.

***

It really was a stroke of luck, Kaname supposes in retrospect, that he held out as long as he did before things started to deteriorate. But ten minutes after slinking into his seat, head ducked with his teacher’s reprimands still ringing in his ears, he could feel the pressure mounting behind his eyelids. Another thirty minutes and he couldn’t look at the board anymore, fuzzy spots and streaks dancing in front of his eyes every time he tried to focus on a character, his skull threatening to split open. And within an hour, he was doubled over in the hallway and heaving up the last remains of his breakfast onto the floor. 

“Geez, at least I don’t think you’re going to be in trouble for showing up late anymore,” Kitamoto’s saying, now. He’s rubbing gentle circles into Kaname’s back with one hand, the other braced on his arm to keep him from faceplanting into his own sick. “If you were getting a migraine you really could’ve just stayed home today.” Gentle concern permeates his voice, and  _ yeah, so much not for not stressing anyone else out over this,  _ Kaname thinks hazily. Though, really, enough variations of this same scenario have played out by now that Kitamoto is essentially Kaname’s designated escort to the nurse’s office, just as Nishimura has become for Natsume. And between him and Natsume the total number of times this kind of thing has happened has got to be getting ridiculous. But they’re both just as kind about it, as patient and as unrelentingly  _ good  _ as they’d been from the beginning. 

It takes another minute or so, forcing long, steady breaths through his nose with the heels of his hands pressed hard into his eye sockets, before Kaname can be sure that his stomach won’t try to turn itself inside out again. He opens his eyes just a sliver and immediately regrets it--even the natural light filtering through the windows of the hall is a vicious assault--but he manages to wave a hand in the direction of his own mess on the floor in front of him. “Ah, I s-should--” 

“Don’t be stupid,” Kitamoto replies, calmly. “You can’t even stand up on your own right now. It’s fine. I’ll let the office know on my way back to class.”

Kaname just nods, meekly, not having it in him to argue. He allows himself to he all but hauled to his feet, but once he’s upright his knees are threatening to buckle and he can’t really remember what they were even talking about anymore because oh  _ god,  _ his  _ head.  _ It’s all he can do to shuffle along, painfully slow, and not trip over his own feet while Kitamoto guides him with a hand between his shoulder blades. 

“You really are just like him, you know,” he mutters after a moment, half exasperated and half fond. 

“Like...huh?” Kaname manages, dazed. He’s squinting down at the floor, it doesn’t look quite right; the scuffed linoleum seems to be shifting and churning under his feet, somehow. 

“Never mind,” Kitamoto tells him, decisively, hand sliding up to give his shoulder a squeeze. “Can your dad come pick you up?” 

***

As it turned out, Dad wasn’t able to come get him until after lunch, which proved to be a mixed blessing. It was a relief in that he would be able to Natsume again before he was sent home, would be able to confirm with his eyes that he had  _ not  _ in fact been devoured in the few hours they’d been apart. 

But it was not an ideal setting for nursing a migraine. He’d been the only one there when he’d arrived, and he must’ve looked pretty bad, because without him having even said anything they’d turned out the fluorescent lights in one corner of the room and given him a bed there, and closed the shades on the window nearest to him. Which was very kind of them, but it wasn’t quite enough right now. And it wasn’t quite silent, either; it wouldn’t be fair of him to expect it to be. But even the very quiet conversation of the two staff members on the far side of the room, and then of of the two students who arrived a little later, one of whom had apparently hurt her wrist in PE class, drilled right into Kaname’s skull. 

He’d tried to sleep, he really had. Force himself to take slow calm breaths, in-out-in through his nose, to imagine places where light and sound did not exist. An abandoned mineshaft. A black hole. The bottom of the Mariana Trench. He’d had years of practice at it, by now. And it could’ve worked, maybe, if not for the sake of the paranoia that had him forcing his eyes open to scan the corner shadows every few minutes for any indication that something was here, that something had slipped in past whatever was keeping watch outside. Every rustle of paper, soft footstep, slight creak of the door set off alarm bells in him, and yeah, he wanted to see Natsume  _ now.  _

He could’ve cried from relief when Natsume finally did come, at lunch. At the sound of his quiet greeting Kaname sits up far too fast, waves of nausea and vertigo promptly knocking right back down, and within the span of a breath Natsume’s beside him, his forehead pinched with worry but his hand firm on Kaname’s shoulder preventing him from moving again. 

“Just stay still, okay? There’s no need for that.” 

“‘Kay…” His voice can barely escape the back of his throat. “D-did you see anyth--” 

“No. Misuzu’s right outside, he isn’t going to let anything through.” His words are low and soft, which Kaname appreciates, but he says nothing more on the matter because in very short order they’re no longer alone, the little corner of the room becoming very crowded as Taki, Kitamoto, and Nishimura appear from beyond the curtain partitioning his bed from the others.

“Oh, whoa. Atsushi was right,” Nishimura says, leaning over the bed and frowning deeply. “You do look bad. Like, really bad.”

Kaname tries not to visibly flinch at the sound of his voice; Nishimura is many things--many good, wonderful things--but  _ quiet _ is certainly not one of them, even when he’s making an obvious effort to keep his voice at a reasonable volume. 

Kitamoto appears beside him and jabs him lightly in the ribs. “Hey, keep it down,” he mutters, then adds to Kaname, “You do look worse, though. I’m glad you’re going home.” He holds up a notebook and file folder. “Here’s the morning’s notes and homework from the class rep, but it’s probably the last thing you wanna think about right now.”

“How are you feeling?” Taki asks, her voice gentle but her eyes wide and anxious. If Kaname had to guess, Natsume hadn’t had the chance to fill her in about what was going on. She knows  _ some _ thing had happened, though, clearly. 

Kaname blinks, throbbing head reeling a bit. “Um,” he starts. He has no idea whatsoever how to respond to so many people worrying over him at once, but he feels too terrible to try and figure it out now. As it stands he’s battling the urge to squeeze his eyes shut, ignore everyone, and hope that the sound and the light give up their assault. 

Kaname opens his mouth to thank her but then Nishimura’s leaning over him again and squinting. “Hey, did they check your temperature?” And then without warning his palm’s on Kaname’s cheek, and he’s hissing through his teeth. “Oh. Dang, yeah, there’s no way you don’t have a fever. What d’you think, Natsume?” 

Nishimura slides his hand down and around to the back of Kaname’s neck, the gesture warm and overly familiar. Kaname probably wouldn’t have minded it at all weren’t for the fact that even his skin itself aches right now, any touch to the head or neck like a nasty static shock. It must’ve shown on his face, because Nishimura’s hand is gone as quickly as it had come, and he looks apologetic. 

“I think we should mention it to the nurse, yeah,” comes Natsume’s (much softer) response, from off to the side.

“And  _ I  _ think we need to let him rest, now,” Taki adds, firmly but not unkindly, with a pointed look at Nishimura. 

“‘Kay,” Nishimura says, glumly, but Kitamoto’s already got a hand on his upper arm and looks ready to haul him bodily away from the bed if need be. 

“Thanks, guys,” Kaname manages in a whisper, feeling pathetically grateful that it’s about to be quiet again.    
And with that Nishimura and Kitamoto are on their feet, wishing him well and telling him to take care of himself, and they’re gone soon after. Taki leaves with them, though she looks torn, and she gives Kaname and Natsume a long, loaded look before she too takes her leave. And then the room is empty, save for Natsume, who never moved.

“Do you want me to stay?” 

There’s a fleeting uncertainty in his eyes, but anxiety seems to be winning out above all else; now that everyone else is gone Kaname can practically feel it rolling off him in waves.

“Please,” Kaname croaks, and Natsume’s shoulders sag, just a bit. 

He doesn’t say anything, anymore than he has to, at least after he’d asked as discreetly as he could to see the curse mark again. Kaname didn’t see his face when he’d looked at it, his eyes already closed of their own accord, but he’d heard the minute hitch in his breath, felt his fingers go still where they were holding back his shirt. 

“Okay…” he breathes. “Okay.” Then, after a moment, so softly Kaname can barely hear it, “I’ll fix this. I promise.”

And...well, there’s a lot Kaname could say to  _ that _ , that is, if the right words could’ve made their way through his battered skull to the tip of his tongue right now.

So, in lieu of any garbled attempt to absolve Natsume of his awful sense of responsibility for all this--which almost certainly wouldn’t work anyways-- he just turns his hand over, palm upward. 

There’s only the briefest second’s hesitation before Kaname feels a cool palm sliding into his own. And it’s a little easier to breathe, just then.

He might’ve been over the moon about this, or nervous, or both, if it didn’t feel like gray matter could start oozing out of his ears at any second. It’s literally all he can do to wrap his own sweaty fingers around Natsume’s hand, ride out another surge of nausea with eyes shut tight.

He finally dozes off like that, Natsume’s thumb tracing  a careful pattern onto the inside of his wrist. 

***

At long last, the migraine dissipates. It leaves Kaname feeling hollowed-out and weak, and padding barefoot into his kitchen at 11PM once it struck him just how  _ hungry  _ he was after a day of nausea-induced fasting. He doesn’t want to try anything too adventurous, because Nishimura was right about him running a fever; at 38 degrees it’s not as bad as it could be, but it’s definitely not great, he’s not about to push his luck and there’s no way he’s going to make it to school tomorrow. As it stands he’s curled up on a zabuton with his knees tucked under his chin, a rumpled blanket around his shoulders and a bowl of reheated rice in front of him, thinking longingly of the bed he’d only just vacated and his hot water bottle.

He ought to eat quickly and get himself back to bed; he feels cold and vaguely achy all over and he really doesn’t want Dad to wake up in the morning to find him passed out on the floor. But’s starting at every shadow in every corner, the subtle shifting of black tree branches in the night breeze out the window setting his heart to pounding. He can’t see anything out of the ordinary whatsoever, can’t even sense anything despite the knowledge that there is in fact a gigantic ayakashi right outside the house watching over him for the night. But he’s still on edge, and more than anything right now he just wants Natsume  _ here _ , where he can see him.

Kaname had wanted Natsume to stay the night, but there had been no feasible way to make that happen without making Dad worry even more than he already has been. Natsume had come straight here after school, but at that point Kaname had just finished his second round of vomiting for the day, and there wasn’t much for Natsume to do except sit there quietly with him in his darkened bedroom until dinnertime rolled around. Honestly, if Natsume had flat-out insisted that Dad let him stay here, he probably would have said yes, but it also would have clued him into the exact nature of the problem. And Kaname doesn’t want to put Dad through that kind of anxiety anymore than Natsume wants to put the Fujiwaras through it, especially if there’s really nothing Dad can even do to help.

Besides, being together wouldn’t necessarily make a difference, would it. Natsume has Ponta to look after him, and Kaname apparently has the ayakashi they were calling Misuzu.

Doesn’t make him feel better, though. He manages a couple bites of rice, but his eyes keep drifting to the phone on the kitchen wall. It’s far too late to call, he’d just wake Touko-san and Shigeru-san needlessly. He leans forward, rests his chin on the table, tries to dispel the nerves churning in his gut. Natsume was fine, he was in the best possible hands with Ponta, he’d be  _ fine— _

He’s jolted from this reverie by a sound somewhere between a  _ tap-tap-tap  _ and a  _ thud-thud-thud  _ on the kitchen window, and he swears his heart skips a beat at the noise. In all of ten seconds he’s hauled himself to his feet and over to the window, telling himself firmly that if it was something overly hostile it wouldn’t have knocked. Probably.

His heart is still hammering away at his ribs when he opens the curtain and finds himself nearly face to face with a disgruntled-looking Ponta.

Kaname unlatches the window as fast as his fumbling fingers will allow, and all but yanks the fat little youkai into the house.

“Ponta!” his urgent whisper is still probably loud enough to wake Dad. “Why are you—is Natsume—?”

“Natsume’s just fine,” Ponta tells him, waddling over to the cushion Kaname had vacated and promptly settling himself down there. “Hinoe’s with him. You ought to be more concerned for yourself at the moment, anyways. I came to see if you’d been eaten yet.”

“Um,” is all Kaname says. That, and, “No?”

“You look terrible,” he says, impassively. “I suppose Natsume was right to worry. You really are a weakling, aren’t you.”

“The headache’s gone, though,” Kaname says, with a little shrug. “So there is that, I guess?”

“Hm. Well, I guess you’re body’s adjusting to the curse, at least a bit,” Ponta says. “Luckily for you.” After a moment, his eyes narrow. “You’re scratching it, though.”

“I’m...huh?” Kaname glances down, and his own hand on his chest. “Oh. I didn’t notice.”

Ponta sighs heavily and sits up on his hind legs, beckoning towards Kaname with a single paw. “Come on, then. Let’s see it.”

Kaname blinks. “Oh. Sure.” He scoots closer on his knees, but hesitates before unbuttoning his pajama shirt. “Just. Don’t do that thing with the light again, please.”

“Idiot. It’d kill you, I told you that. Now hurry up.” He swats at Kaname’s hand. 

“Okay.” As soon as his shirt’s open he finds himself staring down once again at skin that looks utterly ordinary to him. But Ponta’s eyes narrow further.

“It’s gotten larger,” he says, flatly, and prods at a spot up near Kaname’s collarbone, then another halfway down his ribcage, with a gentleness that doesn’t at all align with the tone of his voice.

“...oh,” Kaname says, eloquently, for what feels like the umpteenth time. He’s still straining to see anything at all on his body. “It still doesn’t feel like much. Maybe a little itchy.” And that’s the truth, especially now with the open air on his skin, and Ponta poking at him, but that could all just be chalked up to the power of suggestion.

“That’s good, I suppose.” He settles back down onto the cushion with a grunt. “I’ll stay here tonight, might as well. You need looking after, and I don’t feel like going all the way back to Natsume’s this late.”

“Thank you.” Kaname redoes his buttons and draws his knees up to his chest, telling himself very firmly that he is  _ not  _ itchy, and reaches for his discarded blanket. He’s ready to lie down now, he thinks. He rests his chin on his knee, watching Ponta sniff at his abandoned plate of rice. “How’s Natsume doing?”

Ponta rolls his eyes. “Beside himself, naturally. He won’t say it outright but he’s half-convinced you’ll drop dead at any second.” He scoops up some rice with his paw and pops it into his mouth, chewing without much enthusiasm.

Kaname winces. “You haven’t found anything yet, then?”

“No,” he says thickly, through his mouthful of rice. “That thing is obnoxiously quick, and it doesn’t want to be found. It’ll turn up, though, it said so itself. And sooner rather than later. You’re far tastier to it alive than you are dead.”

Kaname suppresses a shudder, perfectly sure he doesn’t want to know how Ponta would know that fact.

“Let’s just hope the youkai didn’t misjudge how much that flimsy body of yours can take with a curse like that before giving out. Anyways, brace yourself.” There’s a flicker of something, then, something ancient and terrifying, in Ponta’s eyes. “When it does come, I’ll crush it.”

Kaname is silent for a long moment, shoulders hunched, watching Ponta prod at the rice. “Do you want a snack?” he asks, finally, in a voice gone oddly hoarse.

“I’d like to see you get up to go fix one without falling over,” is the prompt answer. “Don’t bother, wimp.”

Kaname smiles faintly, thinking that this is as close to outright concern as he’s going to get from Ponta, and feeling vaguely warmed by it. “Sorry.”

Ponta scoffs, scooping up another mouthful of rice. “The things I have to put up with. This is disgusting, by the way.”


	2. Chapter 2

The next time Takashi goes to see Tanuma, he’s asleep with a fever of 39. Takashi half expects himself and Taki to be turned away at the door, when they show up at the temple after school the following day. When Tanuma-san answers the door, something inscrutable passes across his face for just a moment, but his voice is kind, eyes maybe a bit too knowing for Takashi’s liking. He has to wonder if he’d still be welcome if this man somehow deduced that it was Takashi’s fault his son was being hurt. 

But as it stands they find themselves being ushered into the main sitting room. The house is cool, a space of shade and peace in the heat of the afternoon. Peace, that is, that’s promptly ruined when Takashi steps into the sitting room and lets out an involuntary yelp of alarm, nearly dropping Sensei, who squawks and digs his claws into his arm.

Because there’s a _giant grinning face_ taking up the entirety of both sliding screen doors to the back garden, and there’s Tanuma, lying prone in the massive shadow it’s thrown onto the floor, and there’s so many _teeth,_ and—

—and, oh, right, that’s Misuzu.

It’d only taken a second and a half for his brain to catch up with his eyes, but that was long enough to elicit an alarmed look from Taki, a concerned one from Tanuma-san. When Misuzu catches his eye from beyond the doors, that perpetual somewhat eerie grin of his only widens, and he inclines his head. Before him, Tanuma sleeps on, undisturbed. Takashi presses his lips together, breathing long and slow through his nose a few times and willing his heart rate to return to normal.

And...right, Taki and Tanuma-san are still staring at him. He clears a throat that now feels like sandpaper. “I’m…uh. It’s okay, I’m okay. Sorry.” There’s not a single excuse that’s even worth the attempt to create here. In the wake of his words he can almost feel the silent air buzzing in his ears and he winces a bit.

But, after a long, considering moment, following Takashi’s gaze to the sliding doors to his son and then back to Takashi, Tanuma-san seems content to let it go. He excuses himself with a nod, telling them he’d bring some tea in a few minutes for all the world as though nothing is out of the ordinary, and Takashi couldn’t be more grateful.

The second he’s gone, Sensei wriggles out of Takashi’s arms with a _harrumph_ and lands heavily on the tatami below. He gives Taki a wary side eye the  moment he hits the floor, still pressed against Takashi’s legs, but Taki is already on her knees beside Tanuma. Heart in his throat, Takashi is soon to follow.  

Tanuma is sprawled out on a futon, a light cotton blanket tangled up in his legs. His face is chalk-white where it’s not blotchy red from fever, his breath coming in soft huffs from between parted lips, the lines of his face too taut for him to be very deeply asleep. The damp cloth his dad had presumably placed on his forehead had slipped down over one eye. Takashi bites the inside of his cheek, willing himself not to panic or to wonder too long how he could already look this much worse than he did yesterday.

But the worst part of it, the part that makes Takashi’s stomach lurch and the room all but tilt around him, is what’s plainly visible through Tanuma’s unbuttoned pajama shirt.

He must’ve visibly frozen up, because after a moment he feels Taki’s hand on his shoulder.

“What do you see?” The question is kind but direct.

“It’s. Um. It’s worse now. Bigger.” He can’t see all of it, and he’s not about to completely open up Tanuma’s shirt while he’s sleeping but doesn’t need to to see that it’s spreading, the tips of those jagged black lines brushing his collarbone and dipping down to his lower ribs. _Like a parasite,_ comes the unbidden thought, and he can’t tell if the queasy feeling that settled over him is from the knowledge that this thing is hurting Tanuma, or if the thing itself is emanating it. He feels his fingers twitch where his hands are still hanging at his sides and _I don’t know what to do, what do I do—_

Taki frowns down at Tanuma, a little crease in her forehead. “Yeah, it’s no use,” she says, sitting back a little. “It all looks normal, except those scratches.”

Takashi nods, though it’s the scratches he himself has to strain to see past the thick crisscrossing lines of the curse. Sensei had mentioned this, when he’d come back after staying the night here.

“Oh, he’s drawn blood, just here,” Taki murmurs, dismayed. Her finger hovers above the spot, an angry red line scored into his skin. “We can clean that when he wakes up...I wonder if he needs to trim his fingernails.”

Natsume purses his lips, makes himself nod. Pointedly ignores the voice in his head telling him that the curse itself is of way bigger concern here than a couple scratches, and the so is the youkai who wants to devour him.

Sensei stands, then, abruptly, and waddles over to the sliding doors, looking up at Misuzu—who, incidentally, has not budged, possibly hasn’t even blinked those dinner-plate eyes this whole time.

“Oi, Natsume. Come open this.”

Takashi has to push down a sudden surge of paranoia at the thought of opening the door; Sensei and Misuzu won’t let anything in.

Anything, that is, except the tiny frog that shoots right past Takashi’s shoulder the second he slides the door open. It all but ricochets off the floor behind him, before landing squarely on Tanuma’s cheek.

He wheels around, dumbfounded, his brain not quite caught up to his eyes. “Wha—”

Taki yelps, and Takashi’s on his knees again and scooping it up off Tanuma’s overwarmed skin in a matter of seconds. He kneels over Tanuma with the little thing cupped safely in his palm, his heart hammering. Below him, Tanuma stirs, frowns. Sensei merely _tsk_ s, taking in the spectacle before him before leveling a glare up at Misuzu.

“You ought to stop staring in like that, you know. It’s unsettling.”

Misuzu’s countenance does not change in the slightest. “You told me to keep an eye on this little one, did you not, Madara?” His voice is a steady rumble.

“Well, you’ve certainly done _that_ , by the looks of it. How long have you had your face pressed against up the house like that?”

“Since dawn, when he moved to this room. I suppose you mentioned to him that he ought to move to an outer room to rest, I thank you for that. It is certainly easier to look in this way.”

Sensei licks at a paw. “I’d think you’d be tired of looking, by now. He can’t have been doing much.”

Misuzu blinks, long and slow. “I suppose not. But he is precious to Natsume-dono, is he not? Hello, Natsume-dono,” he adds, with a slight dip of his head, eyes finding Takashi. The tip of his snout is poking into the room through the doors, now.

“Who’s Sensei talking to?” Taki whispers, squinting through the doors.

“A friend,” Takashi tells her, setting the frog carefully on the floor beside him. “Hello, Misuzu. And thank you.”

“I hope all will be well,” Misuzu rumbles on, voice reverberating right through Takashi’s chest. “This child looks to be awfully weak. But then, the same can be said of all humans.”

Takashi doesn’t know what to say to that, but he’s spared an answer, because a few seconds later Tanuma is blinking hazily up at him.

“Natsume…?” His brows scrunch together, looking between them. “Taki?”

“Hi,” Takashi says, a burst of relief in his chest at seeing Tanuma awake and at least somewhat alert. Taki offers a gentle smile, her hand lighting on his arm.

“Who...were you talking to? And...um.” His words are slow, a little slurred, and he reaches up to rub his cheek with a shaky hand. “Was there...something on my face?”

“A frog landed on it,” Taki says, promptly. “I don’t know why, either.”

“A... _frog_?”

Takashi sighs, sets his hand on the floor palm-up beside the frog in question. It hops neatly into his hand and he holds it up to show Tanuma, cupping his other hand around it somewhat, to discourage it from launching itself at Tanuma again. “Sorry. It’s Misuzu’s friend.”

“She’s curious,” Misuzu supplies. “She wonders what human could be so intriguing that I would watch them all day.”

Takashi looks from Misuzu to the frog to Tanuma and back. “Um...apparently the frog thinks you’re intriguing.”

Tanuma blinks. “Oh. Uh. Tell it thank you?”

Despite himself, Takashi feels his lips twitch. “I can speak to youkai, not frogs.”

There’s a beat of silence, then Taki giggles. The sound is bubbly and sweet and Takashi can practically feel it encircling and warming him. Then he’s laughing too, the sound practically pulled from his lips, breathy and halting but genuine. And Tanuma’s grinning too, still bleary-eyed, but watching Takashi with something like wonderment, now.  
  
And is still watching him, when the laughter eventually peters out.

Taki regards them, the smile on her face morphing into something much more knowing, a little glint in her eye that Takashi isn’t at all sure that he likes. Behind them all, Sensei merely rolls his eyes.

“If I were you I’d be checking that mark now. Make sure it hasn’t started sucking out his soul yet or somesuch.” He saunters back up to Tanuma, bats at his nightshirt with a single paw.

“ _Sensei_ ,” Takashi hisses, trying to ignore the icy stab of panic in his chest at the thought.

Tanuma blanches. “Wait, um...is that possible?”

“Who can say,” Sensei replies, obliquely. “Now do you want me to look or not?”

“Ah, yeah…” Tanuma’s voice is a little subdued now but he tugs his shirt open fully. “Thanks.”

And it’s...every bit as bad as he was imagining it to be, now that Tanuma’s chest and torso are fully exposed. Takashi has to fight not to let his fear show on his face as his fingers ghost above the thick latticework of jagged lines.

“This is twice the size it was yesterday,” Sensei says, squinting and very gently prodding at a few spots, particularly where the lines of the mark intersected one another the most. “What a nuisance.”

“How’s it feel?” Takashi asks, through a mouth gone paper-dry.

“It’s…” Tanuma’s mouth twists, and his gaze skitters away, and it occurs to Takashi that he might be a little uncomfortable having two classmates, a cat, and a youkai he can’t even see all staring at his bare chest. He seems to steel himself, though, chewing on his lip a bit and staring steadily at the ceiling. “It’s kind of...odd. Definitely itchy, and my skin feels hot. I dunno.” He tries to prop himself up on his elbows then, strains to look down at himself, but Taki and Tanuma promptly push him back down each with a hand on his shoulder. He smiles, small and apologetic up at them. “Sorry. Was just trying to see if I could see anything. I can’t.”

Taki raises her eyebrows. “Well what _I_ can see is that you’re tearing up your skin. You’ve got to stop scratching.” She turns around, finds a basin of water Tanuma’s dad had apparently left on the table nearby. She snatches the damp cloth that had already slid sideways off Tanuma’s face, and dips it in the bowl, jaw set with purpose. Tanuma finds Takashi’s eyes, a faint amusement in his own.

“Here,” she says, freshly wetted cloth in hand. “Will it hurt if I—” She gestures towards his chest.

“Ah, should be okay,” he says, and that’s all the permission she needs to set to work. It’s really only a few of the scratches that had bled, a few long angry marks across his ribcage and over his heart, but it was concerning that he’d done it to himself at all. He makes a face, when the cloth first touches his skin, sucks in a quiet breath through his teeth. Taki promptly halts, giving him a tentative look.

“No, it’s...okay, it’s okay. Just strange.” He blows out a breath. “You can keep going.”

She does, and Tanuma doesn’t quite look like he’s in _pain_ throughout the process, but he is holding himself very still, back completely rigid against the futon and once again watching the ceiling carefully. At one point he winces, the hand closest to Takashi shooting up towards his chest, fingers twitching, and Takashi takes it in his own without really thinking about it.

“Are you sure this is okay?” he asks, moving Tanuma’s hand back down by his side, not letting go of it.

“Yes. Um. Just itchy. The cold feels nice, though.”

“I’m almost done,” Taki tells him. “Natsume-kun will hold your hand. Scratch _him_ if you need to scratch something.”

“But I don’t want to—”

“It’s fine,” Takashi tells him. “Just do this, if you need to.” He squeezes Tanuma’s hand, and after a moment Tanuma squeezes back, his grip almost painful, fingers still twitching when he eases up on the pressure.

“It’d be funnier if you just scratched him,” Sensei observes, from Takashi’s other side. Takashi shoots him a halfhearted glare before turning back to Tanuma.

“Other than that, how’re you doing?” Takashi asks, as much a genuine question as it is a means of distraction.

“Well…” He taps his forehead with his free hand. “I think maybe _better_ isn’t the right word, because the thermometer kind of says otherwise, but.” He gives a tiny wry smile. “Mostly it’s really nice to not have a headache anymore.”

“I’m glad.” Very carefully, almost as if he’s afraid he’ll bring the headache rushing back out of nowhere, he lays the hand not being wrung by Tanuma’s own on Tanuma’s forehead. He frowns at the sheer heat under his palm, anxiety churning his gut.

“Oh, that’s...wow, that feels worse than I thought.”

“That’s because you’re usually the one who winds up with the fevers, Natsume-kun,” Taki says, patiently, re-wetting the cloth in the basin.

“I really don’t feel _that_ bad,” Tanuma says, quickly, after apparently registering some face that Takashi didn’t even realize he was making. “Today I just slept, mostly. And...I guess the temperature feels kinda weird, like it’s too cold, then it’s too hot, but that’s a normal thing, I guess.” He shrugs. “Right now it’s too hot. But your hand’s cold, so that’s nice.” A split second after he says it, his face colors. “Ah. Sorry, I didn’t mean to be strange, or—”

“No, I…” He feels an odd little _swoop_ ing sensation in his chest at that. But he smiles, gently, and slides his hand a little further up Tanuma’s forehead up beneath his untidy fringe. “It’s alright. I don’t think my hand will feel cold for very long, though, not when you’re head’s so hot.”

“Here,” Taki says, handing over the towel after dipping it in the basin a final time. “I’m done anyways. Just fold it over, it does have a tiny bit of blood on it.”

As soon as Takashi sets it on his forehead, Tanuma huffs out a little sigh, his eyes closing. “Okay,” he says, the word catching on a yawn. “That’s nice, too.”

“You can go to sleep, it’s okay,” Takashi tells him, though in truth he’s anxious he won’t have any excuse to stay here any longer today if Tanuma’s dad comes back to find him sleeping. And, looking down at that angry sprawling mark on him, a tiny, terrible part of Takashi is afraid that if Tanuma goes to sleep he’s not going to wake back up again.

“Yeah, you don’t need to stay awake for us,” Taki adds. “You probably shouldn’t try.”

Another yawn, and a small, self-conscious smile. “I’m sorry. You guys came all this way—”

And then Taki’s hand is darting out and snatching Tanuma’s wrist, quick as a viper strike, and both Takashi and Tanuma are left blinking in confusion.

“ _Don’t_ scratch,” Taki says, firmly, and it’s only then that Takashi registers that Tanuma’s free hand had started to migrate towards his chest. He doubts Tanuma even noticed.

“Wha—oh. I’m sorry, I didn’t—”

“I know.” She places his arm back down by his side, but does not relinquish her grip, and between her and Takashi they’ve got both his hands captive now. Taki sighs. “Honestly, though. We’ll have to put mittens on you, like an infant.”

Sensei barks out a laugh at that, and even Takashi feels a grin touch his lips. Behind them, Misuzu blinks. “Mittens?” he asks, at length. “For what purpose?”

“Human absurdity, no doubt,” Sensei tells him, climbing onto the futon and settling himself down somewhere near Tanuma’s knee. “But I’d love to see that, anyhow.”

***

Now, four hours after arriving at the Tanuma residence, Takashi’s still trying to wrap his head around the fact that he got permission to stay the night.

He probably wouldn’t have, if Tanuma hadn’t woken back up briefly when his dad had come in with a pitcher of barley tea and a thermometer in hand. Tanuma had asked directly and without preamble, still groggy but with a sense of some urgency, as though this had just occurred to him but was suddenly of tantamount importance. And it was a good thing, because he was asleep again within minutes. Takashi didn’t think at first that there was any way Tanuma-san would agree to it, but he watched his eyes, watched the way those eyes all but melted when they met his son’s bright, slightly unfocused ones. And Takashi suddenly didn’t think the man had it in him to deny his son anything when he was this sick, and when there were such frightening factors at play that he could only guess at. The sight had made Takashi’s chest feel warm and a little too tight.

There isn’t a lot for Takashi to do while Tanuma sleeps except for his homework, but he supposes that’s better than sitting beside him for hours and spiraling into a panic. Which is a near thing, anyways, even with his homework in front of him. His eyes keep skipping around on the page, and every mundane household sound he heard sets his heart pounding. He has to give up his math as a lost cause altogether, eventually; he keeps missing steps in the equations, eyes inevitably straying back to Tanuma and his fitful slumber. He’s lying on his back, shifting and squirming every now and then like he can’t get comfortable, his whole face taut. There are two wet cloths on him now, the additional one half wrapped around the nape his neck, which Takashi keeps having to put back in place when it inevitably slips off him, soaking the sheet below. His nightshirt is still open in the front because he apparently can’t stand anything touching his chest at the moment, and Takashi wills himself not to imagine that those black marks are twisting and undulating on Tanuma’s skin like some unnatural living thing in the dim light of the bedroom, that they’re only moving because Tanuma is moving.

They’d moved to Tanuma’s bedroom by now. Misuzu is gone, trading off with Sensei to attempt to track the youkai down, and without Misuzu right outside to keep a direct eye on them it really does make more sense to move deeper into the interior of the house where it would weaken most youkai to venture. Doesn’t make Takashi feel any less paranoid. Or less uneasy that Taki has gone home, to sit alone in an empty house, despite the objective knowledge that she’s far safer in a place far from the two of them, not to mention practically boobytrapped for intruding ayakashi with all its haphazard wards.

As it stands here, though, he keeps startling at virtually nothing, and he sorely doubts he’ll be getting any sleep tonight. It’d come to a head when Tanuma-san had come to rouse Tanuma long enough to help him take a cool bath. When he’d knocked on the door, Takashi had practically jumped out of his own skin.

“You do know that it’s not really a _bad_ thing if we do draw it out, right?” Sensei asks, dubiously, after Tanuma had left with his dad, and Takashi is still trying to remind himself of the basic mechanics of breathing. “It’s just inconvenient to be confronted in such a small place. I mean, I’d win, obviously, but you’ll fuss at me if I destroy Tanuma’s house.”

“Is it likely, though?” Takashi manages, between the deliberate, even breaths through his nose that he’s forcing himself to take. Hyperventilating while Tanuma is in the bathtub isn’t going to help anyone. “That it’d show up tonight?”

“I’d say not. He’s not been weakened _that_ much.” Sensei tilts his head. “But I'd’ve thought you’d want that mark off of him sooner rather than later.”

Takashi blinks. “I—yes. _Yes,_ but.” His fists clench where they rest on his knees. “If that thing shows up and just hurts him again—”

“Pah. You’re underestimating me. As usual,” Sensei says, scuttling over to the very edge of Tanuma’s bed where he’d been perched and swatting Takashi in the back of the head. “Besides. It doesn’t care about him. It’s not after him, it’s after you.”

“Yeah, well, so is half of Yatsuhara.” Takashi’s smile tastes bitter. “But I’m not going to let that get him killed.”

“You’ll have to curb that streak of stupidity in him, then,” Sensei says, airily. “You’ll have your work cut out for you, there, it’s already led to this mess.” A pause. “On second thought, you’re every ounce as stupid as he is, if not worse. _Definitely_ worse. You’re quite the pair to try and keep alive. In Tanuma’s defense, it’s usually _you_ doing something dumb and life-threatening every time I turn my back.”

“He can’t defend himself against what he can’t see,” Takashi says, quietly, as Sensei hops off the bed to land heavily on all fours beside his knee.

“Much less actively fight it,” Sensei agrees, climbing into Takashi’s lap with a grunt and settling himself down. “Though if it’s for your sake, he’ll try to anyways. How tedious.”

***

“ _Risu_.”

“ _Sunahama_.”

“ _Makura_.”

“ _Rappa_.”

“ _Bara_ —” A long breath. “I’m sorry, I think I’m getting worse at this as we go. I feel like a kindergartner.”

Takashi shrugs. “The words don’t have to be long, that’s not the point. And you haven’t lost yet. _Rampaku_.”

“Ku—um. _Kurage_. Hey…” Tanuma turns his head to face Takashi better. His damp hair is sticking up every which-way and there’s a pained tightness in his eyes. “When I was in the bath, Dad asked me if he should do a cleansing of the grounds here. I said no. Was that right?”

“Funny that you think _Natsume’s_ the knowledgeable one on that front,” comes Sensei’s sardonic voice from Tanuma’s other side. Sensei’s literally sitting on Tanuma’s hand and forearm, pinning them down, while Takashi has Tanuma’s other hand in both of his own. It’s all in an effort to keep him from clawing at his own skin, long enough for him to get to sleep. If he can.

“But you’re right,” Sensei continues on, and it takes Tanuma far too long to turn his head all the way around on the pillow so that he’s facing Sensei. “All a cleansing would do is give me and anyone else who’s guarding you a massive headache. Anyhow, we want to lure it in, not scare it off.”

Takashi tries not to visibly grimace at the word _lure_ , and watches as Tanuma gives a shaky nod. “We’re going to take care of it,” he tells Tanuma, trying to infuse his voice with reassurance, and more confidence than he feels. He squeezes Tanuma’s hand. Tanuma squeezes back, without much strength to speak of, but seconds later his fingers are curling against Takashi’s palm, and his entire face screws up then, eyes shut tight.

“Ah...s-sorry.” He draws a shaky breath in, lets it out through his nose.

“Is it hurting you?” The question spills out of Takashi before he can think better of it. When Tanuma had come back from his bath, he’d tried and failed to go to sleep, hands shaking at his sides with the effort to keep himself from scratching, and he’d admitted that it felt like his skin was crawling. That was when Takashi had taken one of his hands and Sensei had pinned down the other, and Takashi had bitten back his own panic proposed a round of shiritori to take Tanuma’s mind off it.

“Um,” Tanuma’s saying, now, and his voice is so small. “I-it’s...yeah. It’s burning.” And to Takashi’s dismay, tears start leaking out from beneath Tanuma’s still-shuttered eyelids, and he’s pressing trembling lips together.

Takashi reaches out, uncertain, hand faltering midair halfway to Tanuma’s face, before his thumb finally lights on his cheek to swipe carefully at hot tears. This is as all as unfamiliar to Takashi as it is alarming; it’s never been the people around him to be harmed by spirits, not really, he inevitably draws it all to himself. And now that someone’s intentionally taken his place in that, he doesn’t know what to do. Especially someone who...well. It’s like someone’s yanked a rug out from under his feet, left him reeling and directionless.

“I’m sorry,” is what he says, finally. “This is because of me.” He must’ve sounded as desolate as he felt, because Tanuma manages to crack an eye open, peers over at him.

“Don’t do that,” he says. His eyes are still watering, his words slurring over one another a little, but the look he gives Takashi is soft. “You’re here. You’re here, so it’s okay.”

Takashi swallows, hard. Tries not to hear the _you weren’t the one who got hurt so it’s okay_ implicit in his words. He nods, withdraws his fingers from Tanuma’s cheek to rest back on top of his hand.

“Can we...sorry, c-can we keep playing?” Tanuma asks after a moment, gaze sliding back towards the ceiling. His jaw is clenched, and Takashi can feel his hand trembling.

On Tanuma’s other side Sensei resettle himself, pressing his body a little closer against Tanuma’s hip before closing his eyes.

Takashi squeezes Tanuma’s hand once more. “ _G_ _etsuyobi.”_

_“B—bijutsu…”_

***

“I’m perfectly aware that you talk,” Tanuma Masayoshi informs the cat currently perched on a cushion across from him. “You’re not quiet. The walls are thin here.”

The cat merely blinks at him. Masayoshi sighs.

It’s early evening, not even dinnertime, yet. Kaname’s already sleeping, and so is Natsume-kun, thankfully. It figured he’d be exhausted by now, he’s about to spend the night for the second time in a row, and he’s left Kaname’s side as little as humanly possible since he’s been here. The Fujiwaras hadn’t had a problem with him staying both nights; yesterday had been Friday and Natsume was apparently free for the weekend. But Kaname’s just been getting steadily worse since Masayoshi picked him up early from school Thursday afternoon, this afternoon’s trip to the doctor having left them with more questions than answers. And Natsume-kun’s helpful, and kind, and so gentle towards Kaname—his presence is likely the only reason Masayoshi hasn’t had to completely close the doors to temple worshippers for the past three days. But Masayoshi’s afraid the boy will only wear himself out at this rate.

He’d helped Kaname from the car to his bed when they’d come back from the clinic, given him his prescription tablets and filled up the hot water bottle for him while a bleary-eyed Natsume had tucked a futon blanket around him—unlike yesterday, he had chills, now, and a formidable fever to match. When he’d left to fetch daikon tea and fresh towels, however, he’d come back to find them both asleep, Natsume with his legs sprawled out under him and his cheek pressed against the mattress by Kaname’s shoulder. Masayoshi had draped an extra blanket over his shoulders, then, and left to fix dinner.

Now, there’s a pot of stew simmering on the stovetop, paperwork spread out on the table before him, and a fat cat across from him. A decidedly silent fat cat.

It was peculiar to see it here, to be sure; it rarely seemed to leave Natsume’s side, especially over the past two days. And he’d seen it curled up beside Kaname, a few times. But now it’s watching him from across the table, as though waiting for something.

“If it’s food you want, I can give you some,” he offers. At that, at least, the cat tilts its head to one side. “I know you’re here to help him,” he says, at length. “I don’t know what manner of creature you are, or if it’s in your nature to show benevolence to humans. But you are powerful, I know that much. And if you’re here with Natsume-kun, you’re here to help my son.”

Naturally, the cat says nothing. Masayoshi pinches the bridge of his nose, a headache mounting between his eyes. “I’m not able to do much. I’m aware of that. If there’s anything I can do, anything at all...well, you won’t tell me directly, but please tell Natsume-kun. I’ll do a purification, or find out how to contact an exorcist, if you need.” He wonders, belatedly, if he really ought to have included that last part when speaking directly to a youkai. But he figures a creature like this, able to sit comfortably on the grounds of a temple, isn’t going to feel very threatened by anything Masayoshi could possibly say or do.  
  
“Something’s attacked him, hasn’t it?” he asks, quietly. “Something that’s planning to return.” It was the only conclusion he could draw, really. Those scratches he’d given himself, like there was something on or in him that ought not to be there. The way Natsume seemed to start at every little sound or movement, like he was expecting something terrible. The handmade talismans that the kind girl Taki Tooru had brought with her when she’d visited earlier today, her own expression equal parts tender and fiercely protective as she’d slipped one under Kaname’s pillow. The way this cat had stuck so physically close to Kaname, of its own volition, in a way Masayoshi had only seen it do with Natsume.  
  
The trip to the clinic hadn’t been good for much aside from getting a few prescriptions, fever reducers and pain relievers, to soothe the symptoms of a problem they couldn’t pinpoint or treat. To Masayoshi’s bemusement their best guess had been that this was all somehow stress-induced. Kaname had looked completely miserable, lying on the examination table because he couldn’t hold himself upright, wracked with shivers with a white-knuckled grip on the table as he fought an urge to tear the freshly placed bandages off his chest where the doctor would see him do it. The perplexed doctor in question had offered a sedative, as well, to “discourage” the scratching, which Kaname had quietly turned down, not quite meeting the doctor’s eyes.  
  
He’d left the clinic leaning heavily on Masayoshi’s arm, a subdued look in his eyes, a look which only cleared when Natsume, waiting outside for them, had all but pulled Kaname into the car, draped a blanket over him and deposited the cat into his lap. Masayoshi expected Kaname to doze off on the way back, tucked against Natsume with his head on his shoulder. But he didn’t, staring off into space whenever Masayoshi caught a glimpse of him in the rearview. And eventually, tentatively, Natsume asked, “They made you feel like you were lying, didn’t they?”  
  
Kaname looked a little thrown off by the question. “Huh? ...oh. Um. They just...” he paused, apparently casting about for the right words. “They didn’t understand why I was hurting myself, I guess? Anyways I bet you have to deal with that a lot, too, don’t—“ he cut off, then, apparently catching himself, and met Masayoshi’s eyes briefly in the mirror with his own wide ones. Clearly he hadn’t intended Masayoshi to hear that, but exhaustion and illness had apparently chipped away at better judgment. Masayoshi just looked back at his son calmly, before turning his attention back to the road. That look had made his chest ache, oddly, but dwelling on it would help no one.  
  
At the present, though, it’s creeping back up on him. “He’d like to keep me out of it,” he tells the cat, as good a confidante as any. “I’m sure it’s in part out of consideration for Natsume’s privacy. But I suspect he’d think it was needless to worry me with it if I can’t do anything to help anyhow...” he trails off, letting his eyes close, trying to collect himself. “It’s...difficult, you see. He’s my child. In very many ways he’s all I have. He’s being hurt by something, and I can’t stop it.” He takes a deep breath, then, too shaky to be truly steadying, and bows his head. “Whatever it is you’re doing for him, I’m grateful to you.”  
  
And once more, the cat remains utterly silent, eyes impassive as ever.  
  
But later, when Masayoshi collects the stew bowl he’d left out, it’s been licked clean.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More out next week- we'll hear from Nishimura next.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (A massive thank-you to deeplyshallow, the real mvp, who read 15k words of fanfiction for a series she is completely unfamiliar with just to help pull me out of an anxiety loop over it.)

Contrary to popular belief, Nishimura Satoru isn’t an idiot. Not a  _ complete _ idiot, anyways. Weird stuff happens around Natsume all the time. Like. Literally  _ all  _ the time. It follows him, like some personal little stormcloud hanging over his head and making him jump at nothing, run from shadows, and converse wildly with thin air when he thinks nobody else can see or hear. 

He’s sure it can’t all be bad. Like the time when, barely three weeks after moving here, he’d remarked offhand that he knew the best spot in town to watch the sunset (and then proceeded to take Satoru and Atsushi there, up high on the side of a hill that Satoru had never even seen before, among soft patches of little blue flowers with a sweeping view of the valleys and a sky dyed orange and purple, and he was absolutely  _ right _ ). Or the countless times he’d seen him with Tanuma and Taki, all three of their heads bent low over some dusty illegible scroll or book or one of those odd little handicrafts Taki seems fond of making, chatting animatedly. His face would be lit from within by something like wonder, that odd impassive mask of an expression he always wore all but gone. All the weird stuff had led to that directly, Satoru is sure of it, because whatever the nature of the weird stuff is, Tanuma and Taki seem to be in on the secret. And it chases the loneliness out of his eyes so naturally to have people to share in it, a feat Satoru and Atsushi have to work twice as hard to achieve. Well, good, Satoru thinks. He can put up with feeling a little excluded if it means Natsume will look a little less  _ haunted  _ all the damn time. He’s too good to be feeling like that, ever. 

But when it  _ is _ bad, it’s  _ bad _ . Winding up inexplicably sick or injured an inordinate amount is one thing, and in Satoru’s book that’s bad enough—no one else he’s ever met before or will ever meet again has the ability to wind up with a broken wrist because he  _ fell  _ off a  _ bridge  _ while just  _ walking  _ across it, like he had a few months back. Satoru was there, he’d seen it, Natsume being beside him and Atsushi one moment and then hitting the water the next, like the stone railing had just disintegrated altogether and invisible hands had shoved him. Really he’d been lucky the broken wrist was the worst of it, that particular stream was rocky and shallow, full of boulders. Satoru still has bad dreams about that.

But what’s really unfair, really truly monstrously unfair, is for that weird unseen force that pursues Natsume to now be hurting the person who’s so obviously fallen for him. Satoru is one hundred and ten percent sure that that’s what’s going on here, has been since last Thursday morning when Natsume showed up late to class with a rumpled uniform and a pale face, thinly veiled terror in his eyes. He hadn’t had the chance to ask Natsume if he was alright, but he didn’t have to wait long before it was morning break and Atsushi was telling him and Natsume that Tanuma had had to go to the nurse. And even though Atsushi said it was a migraine, the way that Natsume’s whole face had just twisted up with guilt said it all, really; whatever bizarre thing had happened to Tanuma before school started was absolutely  _ not  _ Natsume’s fault, but Natsume was absolutely convinced that it was. 

That’s not to say that maybe odd stuff doesn’t happen around Tanuma, too, but Satoru would have no way of knowing that; he rarely even sees Tanuma if Natsume isn’t with him. But what Satoru  _ does  _ know is how sometimes, when they’re all together, Tanuma watches Natsume sometimes with so much quiet wonder like Natsume’s the reason the sun comes up in the morning. And maybe he is, or at least he deserves to have someone who’d treat him like he is. Not the way he was treated by all the people from all the places before Hitoyoshi that he never speaks about. He doesn’t have to speak, it’s ingrained into his personality, it’s in the way he carries himself: gingerly, unobtrusively, like it’s a foregone conclusion in any given situation that he’s unwanted and unwelcome. 

Tanuma treats Natsume like a miracle.

But Tanuma’s sick, now, and nobody knows why. If it  _ does  _ have to do with all the weird stuff he isn’t privy to (and it  _ absolutely  _ does, and when he said as much to Atsushi he didn’t argue with him, which means it  _ really absolutely does _ ), Satoru will be damned if that makes Natsume clam up and never get close to anyone again for fear of getting them hurt. 

The thing is, Satoru has literally no idea what happened that morning, or how to fix it, or, as Acchan had reasonably pointed out, whether he’d just make the whole thing worse by trying to involve himself. 

But doing  _ nothing  _ isn’t an option, either. Not after Satoru had gone to find him on Thursday afternoon when lunch ended and Natsume still hadn’t come back from the nurse’s office. He’d discovered him hunched over the bathroom sink, red-eyed, trying to splash cool water on his face with badly shaking hands. Satoru had done what he could in the three minutes before the next bell, wetting his own hand towel to pat down Natsume’s face and leading him by the hand back to class. It hadn’t been much, but it was something, he hoped. 

And  _ something  _ is exactly what Satoru will have to do. Even if all that is is charging in blind and aggressively  _ caring  _ until someone feels a little less crappy, for his own peace of mind if nothing else. And maybe that’s selfish of him. Whatever. 

When he called the Fujiwaras and asked after Natsume on Thursday night, he’d already figured he’d be at Tanuma’s. And on Friday at school it was so painfully obvious that he hadn’t gotten any sleep the night before, and his eyes kept straying to the window and the corners of the classroom. At lunch Atsushi had given Natsume a pack of kibidango he’d bought him before school, and the smile Natsume gave him when he took it was frail and forced and hard to look at. He’d left school with Taki to head to Tanuma’s once more, and Satoru had wanted to tag along, but Atsushi had rightfully pointed out that if Tanuma was doing that poorly then the fewer visitors at one time the better.

But it’s Sunday, now, and he hasn’t seen or heard from Natsume  _ at all  _ since Friday night, and it’s like there’s something heavy and awful sitting in his chest every time Satoru thinks about it.  _ And,  _ really, Tanuma could be on death’s door for all Satoru knows. It’s all this  _ not knowing  _ that’s doing a number on him, making him restless and crazy and  _ damn  _ it, he needs to  _ do something.  _

So he goes to Tanuma’s. Just shows up; he’s not sure where he wrote down Tanuma’s phone number anyways, and he’s not sure what he’d do himself if Tanuma’s dad told him not to come. Might as well just go, see for himself what the hell’s going on, and apologize for his intrusion or rudeness or whatever later. Atsushi couldn’t come with him; he’d already promised his family he’d help move some furniture and storage boxes around, heavy lifting that his dad wasn’t really able to do. 

Which is how Satoru finds himself on the doorstep of the Tanuma residence, a paper pharmacy bag tucked under his arm, the contents of which he’d blown his allowance on; gel patches for fever, sports drinks, orange juice, vitamin lozenges, and some cheap packs of sweets he’d spent the last of his cash on to give to Natsume. It was a little hard to shop for remedies for some unknown illness, but he figured he had the major bases covered with this stuff. Hopefully. He puts on the sunniest smile he can muster, squares his shoulders, and rings the doorbell. 

He’s only ever seen Tanuma’s dad a handful of times, but he seems like a gracious if quiet person. Maybe that goes along with being a priest; but then again Tanuma himself shares those qualities. He greets Satoru with kind eyes and allows him in, but Satoru can see the worry and the bone-deep exhaustion etched into the lines of his face. Satoru follows him into the house, trepidation mounting and he slipped his shoes off. Maybe it’s him being overly imaginative but the air itself feels heavy, like it takes an extra bit of effort to force it in and out of his lungs. But halfway down the first hall, Natsume’s fat cat appears from around a corner, trotting up to Satoru without preamble and batting a paw at his socked foot. 

It startles a little chuckle out of Satoru, and he bends down to scratch the cat behind its stubby little ears a few times. It waddles along beside them for the duration of the the walk to Tanuma’s room, and as much trepidation as Satoru feels, it’s reassuring somehow to have the cat’s solid body bumping into his leg every couple steps.

When they do reach the room, though, Satoru scoops the cat up almost reflexively and holds it against his chest, vaguely surprised when the creature tolerates it. But he needs all the reassurance he can get, right about now. 

Tanuma looks...well. Holy crap, whatever he thought he expected, this is so much worse. He’s lying on his bed, his head in Natsume’s lap, face ashen and sweaty, damp hair sticking to his skin. His eyes are closed, breath coming in sharp shallow pants, his entire body wracked with shivers. His hands, which for some reason are covered by thin white gloves of some kind, are lying up by either side his face, his fingers laced tight with Natsume’s. But perhaps the most alarming—and  _ bizarre _ — thing is those  _ scratches.  _ Every inch of him that isn’t his head, his hands, or his chest is swaddled up in blankets, but his chest is completely bare, and it is  _ covered  _ in scratches. Some just angry raised lines, some scabbed over where they’d bled, and some where long furrows had simply been gouged of his skin, deep enough to scar, maybe, all of them crisscrossed over each other into some kind of awful map. None of it is bandaged, though there was a basin and a cloth dotted with red on the bedside table, and a half empty tube of something that was probably an antibiotic. Satoru feels his eyes bulge, and he glances from the scratches to gloved, twitching fingers being held fast by Natsume, and oh  _ god,  _ had Tanuma done this to  _ himself _ ?

It’s the hardest thing in the world just then to step into that room, slap on a grin that doesn’t fit quite right on his face, and call out a greeting. 

“Hey, Tanuma! Hey, Natsume!” 

He keeps his voice as soft as he can, if Tanuma has a headache again. His arms are still wrapped around Sensei, but he manages to wriggle the wrist from which his shopping bag is currently dangling. “You guys probably got it covered already, but I did a drugstore raid.”

Tanuma doesn’t respond, doesn’t give any indication that he heard him at all. Natsume doesn’t either, at first. Satoru can’t quite see his expression; Tanuma’s bed doesn’t face the door and Natsume’s sort of hunched over anyways, a curtain of fringe half hanging in his face. But after a beat of silence, it’s like someone flipped a switch, and he starts a little, head snapping up and towards the door. “Wh—Nishimura?” 

He meets Satoru’s eyes, then, and geez, he looks like he hasn’t slept in a year. But his eyes are round and startled, flicking oddly enough between Satoru’s face and the cat in his arms. He almost seems to be holding his breath, but after a long moment, his shoulders slump, apparently having reached some sort of unspoken deliberation with his weird cat, and he lets out a long shaky breath. “Thank you for coming,” he says, softly. 

“‘Course,” Satoru says, taking that as his cue to come closer. He drops to his knees beside the bed, the cat finally squirming out of his grip and bounding onto the bed, landing heavily beside Natsume’s knee. “Acchan couldn’t come with me, but we both missed you, and we were worried.” He scoots forward a bit, resting his hand awkwardly on the mound of blankets piled against Tanuma’s side. At the same time, Tanuma’s dad has come up beside the bed, and Satoru doesn’t look up to see his face, but he can see how gentle his hand is as he sets it on Tanuma’s forehead, feels the side of his neck. Tanuma doesn’t really stir but he leans into the touch, just a bit. Satoru gnaws on his own bottom lip for a moment, watching, and finally can’t help asking, “What’s wrong with him?” 

The sheer  _ pain  _ in Natsume’s eyes then is enough to make Satoru immediately regret the question. But it’s Tanuma’s dad who answers  the question. “We’re not sure,” he says evenly, reaching for the damp cloth to dab at Tanuma’s chest, where the ragged still-bleeding edges of a spot that’s more a shallow gouge wound than a scratch. “At the clinic the doctor wasn’t able to determine the source of the fever, or the cause for...this,” he gestures with his free hand at Tanuma’s thoroughly abused skin. “He advised we just allow the fever to run its course, give him prescription tablets. But if it climbs much higher than this, I’ll take him to the emergency room.” 

Satoru is torn between alarm at the notion of the ER and the thought that  _ yes, good,  _ this was all so frightening that maybe he should already be in the hospital. But he doesn’t have time to dwell on it because quite suddenly Tanuma’s whole body gives a violent jerk. He cries out, the sound a weak strangled thing that Satoru never wants to hear again in his life, and he tries to wrench his gloved hands out Natsume’s grip. 

His dad is quick to respond, cupping his cheek and leaning in close while Natsume’s hands slide down to take a firm hold of his wrists. Satoru’s own hands hover somewhere above Tanuma’s shoulder, wanting to help but not sure how. 

“It’s all right,” Tanuma-san says, voice exuding calm. “I’m cleaning you up a bit. It won’t take long.” 

“...Dad?” His voice is raw and thready, eyes half-open now but not quite focused on his father’s face. 

“Yes.” He strokes Tanuma’s cheek with his thumb, so softly. “I’m nearly finished. Lie still.” 

He nods, the slightest bob of the head, but the next second he’s trying to rip his wrists out of Natsume’s grip again. And he manages it, with one wrist at least, but Satoru snatches his hand up and holds it fast before his fingers can make it to his chest. Natsume takes his wrist again but Satoru doesn’t let go either, leaning into Tanuma’s field of vision. 

“Hey, now,” he says, in as light a tone as he can manage. “You gotta let your dad help you so you’ll get better.” 

“N-N’sh’mura…?” Tanuma frowns, eyes now just barely tracking Satoru’s face. 

“Yup,” Satoru says, brightly. “I came to make sure still alive because I am an  _ awesome  _ friend, and because you bailed last weekend on the mall trip so now you  _ have  _ to get better or else Natsume’s not gonna have any summer clothes.”

Tanuma’s forehead scrunches up. “S-summer...what?” Tanuma’s hand is still trembling, but he isn’t pulling away. Satoru shoots a quick glance up at Natsume. He still looks stricken, but he too seems to be listening to Satoru run his mouth. Behind them, Tanuma’s dad is reaching for the antibiotics tube. 

“Yeah, we asked you last Saturday, remember?” he says, easily. “And you had to say no because you were helping to clean out old storerooms here or something boring like that. Ah, no offense, Tanuma-san,” he tacks on, with a little shrug, not even turning to look at the man in question. “Anyways, Natsume needs summer clothes because he pretty much wrecked all his stuff from last summer already from falling off bridges and leaping out of trees and whatever else it is he does on a regular basis,” he flashes Natsume a grin, “and I told Touko-san we’d take him because all those new stores in the mall just opened which we wanted to check out anyways. But because Touko-san was  _ so excited  _ that he’s gonna get to go pick out clothes with his friends, even if that’s not really Natsume’s idea of a good time, now we  _ have  _ to go ‘cause we can’t let her down or else we’ll be terrible people, ‘cause she’s  _ Touko-san. _ ” That actually gets a wobbly little ghost of a grin out of Natsume, and heartened, Satoru plunges on. “Anyways me and Atsushi wanted you there because it’d make him less anxious about being dragged out of the house and having a bunch of different outfits thrown on him. And also, y’know, your opinion matters to him, like a whole lot, so yeah.” 

Natsume doesn’t even have it in him at the moment to look all that embarrassed by this, but Satoru could’ve sworn the noise that the cat just made was a snort. 

“We should invite Taki-chan too,” Satoru continues, when he catches a glimpse of what looks like a talisman sticking out from under Tanuma’s pillow. He’s got a nearly identical one in his school bag right now, so does Atsushi, paper and wood and painted with symbols he can’t read, a gift from Taki a few months back. If it really was some kind of talisman, than it didn’t look like any that Satoru had ever seen at a shrine or temple. Both she and Natsume has seemed awfully keen on him and Acchan carrying the things around, though, so he hadn’t argued, equal parts confused and touched by the gesture. “Did she come by today?” he asks Natsume. 

Natsume’s eyes fall on the charm. “Taki? She...yeah. She was here. She fell asleep, though. Tanuma-san drove her home awhile ago.” Something softens in his eyes. “I think….she stayed up really late making this for him, so. It’s good she went to get some rest.”   


“Better,” Tanuma says, abruptly. His voice sounds rather like he’s swallowed a cup of dry sand.

Satoru leans in a bit. “What’s better?”

“Better,” Tanuma repeats, adamantly, eyes overbright. “Safe. It’s safe, her house, it won’t...it won’t come for her there.” 

Satoru blinks. “‘It’?” he repeats.

Natsume glances from Satoru to Tanuma, apprehension plain on his face, but he remains quiet. 

“You’re right,” Tanuma-san says, calmly, after another beat of silence. “No harm ought to come to her in her own home.” He doesn’t elaborate further than that. But Tanuma’s eyes drift up  towards the direction of his father’s voice, and he seems to relax, just a bit. The priest straightens up, then, sets the antibiotic back on the bedside table, and lays a hand on Tanuma’s forehead. “You ought to rest,” he says. 

“Mhm,” Tanuma says, vaguely, eyes closing immediately at the touch. 

Satoru just leans back a little, sorely confused and pretty sure nobody present is about to enlighten him. But the words  _ It won’t come for her there  _ are reverberating through his head, making something prickle at the back of his neck, because  _ what  _ is coming for  _ who, _ exactly. But it’s useless to let his brain get stuck on that, now, and  _ come on, focus, what is it that YOU can do, right now?  _

“So, Natsume,” he asks, finally, with a tilt of his head. “How long’ve you been sitting there like that?” 

“I...huh?” Natsume clearly isn’t expecting the question.  

“A good few hours, I would say,” Tanuma-san supplies, clearly picking up on Satoru’s lead, and clearly agreeing. “Natsume-kun has been a great help to us, especially while I’ve been preoccupied making some arrangements to close the temple for the next few days. He hasn’t left Kaname’s side all day. Though by now he could certainly use a rest.” 

“Yeah, I’m calling it. You need a break,” Satoru declares, cheerfully. “No offense, but you look like hell. I’m sure you need to eat. Or catch a nap. Or go to the bathroom. Or all three of those things, probably.” 

Natsume doesn’t answer immediately, just blinks over at Satoru for a moment with those big, lost eyes of his. “Um. I—”

But Satoru’s already perching himself on the edge of the bed by Natsume’s hip, setting his hand on Tanuma’s wrist a bit further up than where Natsume’s already gripping him. “So I hold his hands back, yeah? For the scratching or whatever he’s doing? Is that what the gloves are for? They look like driving gloves or something.” Now that Satoru is looking closer, he can see tiny flecks and splotches of red in places on the fingertips of the otherwise white gloves; clearly they’re not  _ that  _ effective. 

“N-no, it’s really okay, I can—”

But it’s Tanuma-san that cuts the weak protest short. “That’s very kind, Nishimura-kun. I hate to ask you to do it, but if you are willing to sit with Kaname for a just a few minutes I’d like to fix Natsume-kun something to eat. For you as well, if you’re hungry this time of the afternoon, but for Natsume-kun I’m afraid I’ll have to insist. I don’t believe he touched his breakfast.” 

Satoru hates to hear that, but it sounds about par for the course for Natsume. “Well, in that case, scootch over,” he says, nudging Natsume’s shoulder. “It’s my turn.  _ And _ ,” he adds, cutting off any potential rebuttals, “you  _ know _ he’ll be upset with you if you’re not eating or sleeping.” Satoru glances thoughtfully down at Tanuma. “I could tattle on you, too, you know, for good measure. Right now.” He clears his throat theatrically. “Hey, Tanuma…” 

_ That  _ puts a flicker of outright panic in Natsume’s eyes, and he shakes his head, vehemently. “Ah—okay, fine, okay, just. Don’t do that.” 

“Don’t neglect yourself, and I won’t have to,” Satoru replies sweetly.

Natsume’s shoulders slump. He nods, slowly. 

Fifteen minutes later finds Satoru cross-legged on the bed with Tanuma’s head in his own lap, his hands clasped around Tanuma’s wrists. He’s running his mouth again, about absolutely nothing of consequence; he’s pretty sure he’s changed topics at least seven times by now but Tanuma’s just staring off into space, eyes half-lidded, and Satoru’s pretty sure Tanuma’s forgotten he’s even here. His skin is alarmingly warm where his cheek half-squashed against Satoru’s knee, but he’s shivering all over, the mass of blankets tucked everywhere around him and the fat cat pressed against his side apparently doing little to ease it.

“—so then it turns out he _wasn’t_ the murderer, and it really _was_ his twin brother all along, which I guess is what everyone suspected at the beginning anyways. But it didn’t even have anything to do with revenge at all, the motive was actually just something boring like insurance money? I dunno. Aniki liked it, but I guess I thought the ending was kinda stupid and out of left field. The revenge plot would’ve been way cooler. Anyways next time we go, _I_ get to pick the movie. There’s this one with space robots coming out next month, and it’s based on some American cartoon I’ve never actually seen but it looks _amazing_ anyways, and—” 

“N...sh’m’ra…?” 

Satoru barely hears it, the sound of his own name grated out through chattering teeth. But he squeezes Tanuma’s wrists, gently, waits for glazed eyes to focus on his face. “Yup,” he tells him, leaning in. “What can I do for ya?” 

Tanuma squints, frowns a little, the question taking a disconcertingly long time to process. “Um. I...c-can I. W-water…?”

“Yeah, of course. Hang on.” It takes some serious twisting and maneuvering for Satoru to reach and open the bottle on the table, prop Tanuma’s head up enough to help him get a few sips down,  _ and  _ still somehow keep his hands pinned down, but Satoru manages, and only spills a tiny little bit of it down Tanuma’s front. He feels a twinge of guilt, though, when some of it hits Tanuma’s exposed chest and he gasps, fingers curling and twitching uselessly against the air while Satoru tightens his hold on his wrists.

“Man, what happened to you?” Satoru murmurs, setting down the water bottle before fitting his hands against Tanuma’s, lacing their fingers together, silently willing those pained creases in his forehead to soften. 

He doesn’t answer for long enough that Satoru wonders if he’s gone to sleep. Then, very softly, “...Dad?” 

Something in Satoru’s chest twists up horribly at that. He raises their joined hands to side of Tanuma’s face, pressing the back of his own hand against his cheek. “He’ll be back real soon, yeah? He said he’s gonna come sit with you.” 

“W-where’d he go…?” There’s a tiny wobble in his voice, now, and Satoru bites the inside of his own cheek, hard. 

“He’s fixing Natsume some lunch. He’ll be back before you know it.” 

At that, Tanuma’s eyes finally do open, something like panic stealing across his face. “Natsume...w-where…” His fingers tighten around Satoru’s. 

“Probably in the kitchen with your dad. He’s alright, it’s okay.” 

“O…kay,” Tanuma echoes, slowly, frowning. “I-is Ponta with him?” 

“Um, the cat?” Satoru casts a dubious glance to the cat in question, who at the moment appears to be asleep, nestled comfortably against Tanuma’s hip. “No, he’s right here.” 

“Should be...with N-Natsume...h-he sh-sh’ld g-go and—” The words falter and cut off; his teeth are chattering in earnest now, but his eyes have gone wide, and once again Satoru’s struck with the feeling that he’s missing something crucial here, a puzzle he only has half the pieces to. 

“Hey, hey, everyone’s close. Everyone’s okay,” Satoru says, because he doesn’t know what else he’s supposed to say. “They’re more worried about you than anything, I think. Uh, hey,” he says, eyes falling on the bedside table, the thermometer sitting beside the water he’d just set down. “Your dad mentioned he’d wanted to get your temperature again. I think it’s kinda high right now, so I’m gonna check, okay?” 

Tanuma doesn’t answer him, but he obediently lies still and silent with the thermometer under his tongue long enough for Satoru to get a reading, gaze drifting back to the ceiling.

And feel his own blood run cold, the second he sees the numbers. 

At first he’s convinced it’s a mistake, but a bad reading from Tanuma’s teeth clacking together should make it read lower than it was, not higher than it was, right? But a second reading reveals the exact same numbers, and Satoru curses under his breath. 

The first thing he does, with a single, shaking free hand, is strip off all the blankets as fast as humanly possible, as though they’re about to catch fire, letting them fall in a heap on the floor. 

“Hey, hey, I know, I’m sorry, I know,” he babbles, feeling like the  _ literal worst _ human being on the planet when Tanuma lets out a choked sound halfway between whimper and gasp at the sudden change in temperature. Natsume’s cat, now displaced from the sheets, gives a huff and hops right over Tanuma, bounding off the bed and landing heavily on the floor. He shoots them a long look before turning and waddling out of the room. 

“Heh, bet he’s gonna go get Natsume for us right now, huh?” Satoru says, and geez, he really hopes he doesn’t sound as frantic as he feels, with Tanuma in his lap shuddering and delirious and in need of a hospital, like,  _ yesterday _ .  He brings their joined hands up to press against Tanuma’s cheek again. “He’s a smart kitty. Weird, but smart.” 

“Cold,” is all Tanuma says, turning his face towards the back of Satoru’s hand, eyes screwed shut. 

“I know, I’m sorry.” Satoru feels like a broken record now. “Let’s get your dad in here, sound good?” 

“...Dad…”

“Yeah. Just hold on.” Satoru’s doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do, he can’t exactly leave Tanuma here like this but he doesn’t think even his voice will quite carry all the way to the kitchen. Still, worth a shot. He relinquishes his grip on one of Tanuma’s hands in favor of cupping one of his own around his mouth, takes a deep breath.

“Hey, Natsume? Tanuma-san?” 

No answer. He tries again.

“Hey, can somebody come back? ...Natsume?” 

Still nothing, just his own voice bouncing sharply back at him off the walls. 

“N’ts’me…” Tanuma’s voice is muffled against the fabric of Satoru’s jeans. 

“He’s coming, alright?” His fingers rake absently through Tanuma’s hair. “We’re gonna take care of you.” It’s funny how he can say that so easily, he thinks, when he’s never been so out of his depth in his life. 

“Upset…”

Satoru can barely make the word out, at first. “Hm? Who’s upset?” 

“Upset...h-he’s….upset.” Tanuma turns his face just enough that Satoru can hear him, but panting punctuates the words, labored huffs of breath against Satoru’s knee. 

“You mean Natsume?” Satoru asks. Tanuma’s head bobs, once. “‘Course he’s upset, man, he’s worried. You’ve got one heck of a fever, don’t you?” He slides his fingers very gently down to rest on the side of Tanuma’s neck, though he’s not even sure why—maybe to convince himself that his friend’s heart isn’t going to give out any second, comes the morbid, unbidden thought. Whatever. Makes him feel better, anyhow. “Besides, he’s not upset with  _ you _ , it’s not like it’s your fault.” 

“M-my fault.” 

Satoru almost misses the words entirely; he has to lean in close, ear hovering just above Tanuma’s flushed cheek. “Wait, what?” 

Tanuma’s face snaps back upwards, quite suddenly, at a speed that Satoru wouldn’t have thought possible right now, his nose almost colliding with Satoru’s ear. “My fault,” he repeats, softly, and the  _ look _ in those glassy eyes makes Satoru’s stomach hurt. 

“Whoa, hey,  _ no _ , no, it’s not,” he says, managing a tight grin even though he feels ripped open and raw. “How the hell is it your fault if you’re sick?” 

Tanuma shakes his head, breaths coming too hard and too fast now. “It is. G-got in t-the way. Got hit.” 

“Hit?” Satoru’s own voice has gone small despite himself, like he’s talking through a chunk of of ice. A tiny part of him wants to slap his hands over his ears, refuse to hear any more fragments of whatever awful narrative is looming here. 

But Tanuma doesn’t elaborate. “Had to,” he’s saying now. “Had to, h-had to, I—” the words are fevered, like a chant, almost, through trembling lips. 

“Okay, it’s okay, you had to, I got it. You gotta calm down, though, okay?” Satoru takes his face in both hands, leaning in close once more, cramming down his own panic. “Breathe, alright? Breathe. Can you do that?” 

“—love him, I-I…” Tanuma falters, gasps, an aborted, choked sound. The focus of his eyes has gone wide, like he’s staring through Satoru and at the wall behind. 

“I know.” Without realizing it his thumbs have started tracing tiny circles high on Tanuma’s cheekbones, and his smile sits stiff and wrong on his face, but he’ll wear it all day if it’ll make any difference here. “I  _ know,  _ believe me. And  _ because  _ of that, you gotta get better, right? Stop him from doing dumb stuff. And while you’re at it try not to do dumb stuff yourself, yeah?” 

“...yeah,” Tanuma echoes, after a moment, soft and hazy, but he doesn’t look so frenzied anymore. He hasn’t quite relaxed under Satoru’s hands, but at least he’s breathing again. Then, after a moment, so slurred that Satoru can barely make out the individual words, “....’s after him…” 

And if  _ that’s  _ not ominous as hell, Satoru doesn’t know what is, but he knows asking for elaboration would do more harm than good.

What Tanuma says instead, for a  _ third  _ time, in a tiny, fractured voice, is, “...Dad?” 

“He’s coming.”

“...cold…” 

“Yeah, I know. Just hang on a sec, can you do that?” Even as he says it he can hear the odd hysterical undercurrent to his own words, and wow, okay, now is  _ not  _ the time for his own personal freakout. He takes a deep breath. 

It’s a near thing, preventing said personal freakout  in the three-ish minutes it takes for Natsume and Tanuma-san to return. Tanuma’s stopped talking back by that point, breathing labored and eyes fallen shut, his hands limp by his sides, fingers just barely twitching towards his chest. Satoru’s just been sitting there with Tanuma’s head still in his lap, messing with his hair, combing it back over and over through his fingers and trying very very hard to think about nothing at all. Still, he can’t prevent the almost-sob that escapes him the second Natsume steps into the room, wide-eyed with alarm, his harried-looking cat at his heels and Tanuma-san barely two steps behind.

“Hah...ah, hey,” Satoru says, with a vague gesture at the thermometer still resting on the sheets by his knee. “I think he needs to go to a hospital now.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And next we'll hear from the ayakashi, stay tuned kids, I'm stoked to write it, but things had to get worse before they get better-
> 
> (Edit- also, friends, I am a boob at responding to comments, but just know that everything each of you has said is so special to me and really helping to encourage me to keep going and find my narrative voice after having not written in so long. I love you all. You can come yell at me over on tumblr as well, I’m owletstarlet!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Tell me, child, are you the defender of all humans, or just this one human?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slight CW for (vague) violence...? Nothing so bad, I don't think.
> 
> At the end is some delightfully creepy art of the youkai made my the wonderful @fmobbu on tumblr.

Kaname has dreams, in the hospital. Or, maybe _dreams_ is the wrong term for it. They’re more like quick bursts of something, something _other_ , unsettling but so brief he can never recall quite what it was.

He remembers the blue, though. Always a flash of blue.

Maybe they can’t be quantified as dreams, even, not when any concept of when he’s conscious and when he isn’t seems to slip through his fingers. He knows Natsume’s here, a lot of the time, knows from a gentle voice and gentle hands and hazel eyes dulled by exhaustion. He knows Dad’s here, always, knows from the fingers in his hair and the snatches of sutra, low and soft, like a warm current in the air all around him. He also knows they must be pumping a drug of some sort into him or else he wouldn’t be drifting off at all, because he’s always _burning_ and always _freezing_ and it just _hurts,_ so much—

And then there’s the blue.

He sees it once just over Natsume’s shoulder, he thinks, just for a second. He must’ve cried out at the sight, or else done something to give Natsume the impression he’s in pain, because Natsume’s hands are cupping his face and he’s uttering kind-sounding words that Kaname can’t really comprehend or respond to. He lets himself be calmed, then, but every time he’s seen Natsume since his eyes keep straying to the now empty air past his shoulder.

A true dream does happen, though, eventually. A proper nightmare, two days into his hospital stay, by his own hazy and possibly inaccurate estimation. But one moment, Natsume’s by his bed, his fingers resting on Kaname’s cheek, having some whispered conversation with Ponta that Kaname’s too drowsy to really follow. And the next, he’s curled on his side, lying in the underbrush of some darkened featureless forest, clutching at his own throat, eyes full of terror and supplication when they lock onto Kaname’s. Blood’s bubbling from his lips, and when his scrabbling fingers move just enough for Kaname to see the damage, he tastes bile, because oh _god,_ his whole throat’s just _gone_ —

If he’d stopped to think, he might’ve recognized it, a variation of the very same dream that’s been plaguing him on and off for months now. But as it stands, he’s screaming himself hoarse as the leaves below Natsume all turn red, trying to run to him but something’s holding him back, has him by both arms and he can’t move he can’t move he _can’t move._

And Natsume lets out one last gurgling breath, fingers twitching, eyes still locked onto Kaname’s, before finally going still—

Kaname almost misses it the first time, through the fog of his own hysteria, the flash of blue, just beside the nearest tree trunk. But then it’s looming over Natsume, and it’s no longer formless. It’s a figure, paper-masked, clad in deep blue silk. It’s hairless, and diminutive, not much taller than a child, really, but there’s splotches of blood running into the delicate black swirls of the single character painted onto the mask, blood running in dark rivulets down its pale hands. It does nothing, says nothing.

Kaname wakes up choking on air, eyes burning. And he’s not alone.

“Curious, that you’d think I’d leave so much of him behind. What a waste that would be.” The voice is smooth, unperturbed. And coming from the foot of Kaname’s bed.

Kaname’s heart all but stops.

“Do all humans dream of such things?” the voice continues. “Or just you?”

Something cold prickles at the back of Kaname’s neck. And he’s lurching forward, then, but he doesn’t make it very far at all before he meets resistance and falls right back down again, wrists aching and the plastic railings of the bed creaking on either side of him. He stares down at the foot of the bed, breathing hard.

Sure enough, it’s the very same creature that’d been standing over Natsume’s body. It’s sitting cross-legged down by Kaname’s toes, regarding him with a tilt of the head. It’s no longer blood-splattered, and Kaname can see the blue of the kimono is shot through with silver threads that glint in the harsh light of the room.

“You do talk, don’t you?” the youkai asks, airily, leaning in a bit. “You can certainly scream, at least in your own head.”

Kaname’s mouth goes dry. “Y-you...you’re—”

“The one who’s come to eat you, yes,” it replies, calmly, leaning in even further as though trying to get a good look.

Panic hits like an ice pick to the chest, and tries once more to no avail to yank his wrists free, weakness turning his limbs to jelly even through the surge of adrenaline. He can barely turn his head to look beside him, where the chair for visitors now sits empty. His breath hitches. “You...Natsume, y-you didn’t—”

“You ought to calm yourself,” the youkai says, thin bluish lips just visible beneath the mask curling into a little frown. “You’re making those boxes beside you turn all noisy.” It points a spindly finger at the monitors beside the bed. “Are these really meant to keep you alive? How odd. Anyhow, as to your friend, I wouldn’t know where he’s gotten off to. But he must be close, because his _beast_ is still prowling about now, just outside.” The frown twists into a sneer.

“Don’t touch him,” Kaname grates out, with one last feeble tug at the restraints before his strength dissipates entirely. All he can do is lie there, breathing hard, his insides twisting up horribly, and damn it, he can’t _move_ , _he can’t_ _move..._

The creature regards him for a moment, chin propped on its hand. “When I do, I don’t know what _you_ intend to do about it, young one. You’re in quite the sorry state at the moment. It’s so peculiar to watch, though, all these human healers scuttling about.” There’s a note of genuine curiosity in its voice now, as it waves a pale hand in the general direction of Kaname’s chest, at the vitals monitors and scattered bandages there. Kaname can’t see it himself at the moment, lying all the way down without the end of the bed elevated. “It’s like they’ve stuck a bundle of worms onto you. They’ve even put one under your nose.” Another pointing finger now, long and pale, this one inches from Kaname’s face, and Kaname’s breath sticks in his throat. “What purpose does this even serve?”

“Leave.” It’s barely more than a whisper, but it’s all Kaname can manage. “Please just leave…”

The youkai ignores him, looking towards the IV stand now. “Is this supposed to be medicine, then?” It clucks its tongue. “If it’s meant to restore your strength to you, it’s not done a very good job, now has it?”

“Leave,” Kaname repeats, and manages not to flinch when the creature’s head snaps back towards him.

“And then what would you have me do?” it asks, lightly. “Move on to another town, gobble up the humans there? Is that acceptable to you, so long as you don’t know them?”

Kaname says nothing.

The creature flashes a grin. Its teeth don’t look particularly sharp, but far too many are showing in its smile. “Tell me, child, are you the defender of all humans, or just this one human?” A considering pause. “I could spare you and eat that girl-child instead, I suppose. The one with the penchant for pesky talismans.”

His blood goes cold. “N-no—”

“Or that priest, perhaps,” it continues, as if it hadn’t heard, with a thoughtful scratch of the chin. “It doesn’t look as though he’s here, just now. But I’d gobble him right down if only to stop that incessant chanting of his. It’s enough to give anyone a headache—”

“ _No_.”

The single syllable isn’t so loud—Kaname’s incapable of producing any substantial volume at the moment—but it’s sharp and laden with terror, and enough to give the creature pause.

“Ah,” it says, after a moment, with just a touch of wryness. “The defender of a handful of humans, then. That sounds to me like far more trouble than it’s worth. I can barely sense drop of real power in your blood…” A single finger raised, it traces through the air along the path the IV line makes from the fluids pouch to the inside of Kaname’s forearm. Kaname holds himself very still, the deep blue of the kimono sleeve just barely brushing his skin. “Don’t you think the other child would be much better suited to the task?” the youkai continues, in a murmur. It doesn’t sound too troubled, but there’s a touch of genuine bafflement in its silvery voice. “He has much power. I’ll admit he could very well have defeated me if I’d afforded him the chance. A fine mess you’ve gotten into, trying to take it upon yourself…” The creature shrugs its thin shoulders. “It’s neither here nor there now, I suppose. You’ll both be gone soon.”

Quite suddenly, Kaname’s skin prickles, then burns. Like a switch has been flipped, the sensation steals his breath, rolling from the center of his chest and out, down across his stomach, up to his throat. The pain hadn’t left him when he’d woken; it never really does, not really, but drugs had presumably calmed it down to a distant undercurrent. Until now, and it leaves him gasping, wanting to curl in on himself and unable to, blinking through burning eyes up at the very source of the problem.

It frowns at him, and, oddly, reaches outstretched fingers towards his face. Kaname flinches when it cups his cheek, fingers cool and dry. “For this part,” it says, a touch of regret in its voice, “I am sorry. Causing undue suffering in the hunt is distasteful to me.” Its fingers move to just below Kaname’s chin, tilting his face up. “But, you know, if you hadn’t interfered, it would all have been long over and done with by now.”

It takes Kaname far too long to muster the breath to reply. The escalated beeping of the monitors is drilling into his ears and right through his head. “Leave,” he grates out, finally. “‘M b-begging you...just go…”

“I will not,” comes the untroubled response, the cool fingers falling away from Kaname’s fingers as the creature sits up and back against the bed rail. “I’ve had naught but the meat of mountain boars for quite some time now. Vile creatures. Though if it consoles you, at all, I am not truly present in this place, not at the moment.”  
  
Kaname blinks. “W-what—”

The creature reaches forward once more to tap Kaname lightly on the temple, just beside his eye. “If I was, you would not see me, would you?” It jerks its head towards the window. “And that great ugly brute would be in here attacking me.”

Kaname squints at it, confusion deepening. The pain is ebbing now, somewhat. “It’s…’m dreaming…?”

“Hm. Perhaps.” It taps its own forehead. “For my part, it was not quite intentional. I myself went to take a nap, and now I’ve slipped into your mind, I suppose. A curious thing, all I’ve gotten so far from you is an odd mixed-up jumble of feelings and images. This, though…” it scratches its chin. “This is new. I’m impressed you can hold a conversation at the moment.”

“You’ve b-been...watching?” He bites the inside of his cheek, shuts his eyes as though he could somehow shut it out that way.

“Well, naturally,” the creature says, voice edged with a kind of exasperation now, like he’s talking to a dim-witted child. “Not a usual tactic of mine, or a necessary one, I’ll admit. But this has all been so inconvenient.” A slight pause, then a delicate sigh. “You know, from pity alone, I could almost be moved to spare you…On your own you’re not much of a meal.”

Kaname feels a soft huff of breath on his nose, catches of whiff of something like rainwater on pavement. His eyes snap open, and bites back a yelp. The intricate curving and swooping lines of that mask, vaguely reminiscent of Natsume’s sketch of the curse, hang right before his eyes. Those bluish lips are tugged downwards, pensive.

“But wouldn’t it be crueler, really, to take your companion from you and then leave you behind? That won’t do. I will have you both.”

Kaname says nothing. He thinks he’s forgotten how to breathe.

After a moment, he feels the prick of a fingernail against the skin of his wrist.

“They ought to untie you. It’s awfully barbaric. And it’s not as though you’ll escape.”

***

“—can’t just do _nothing_ , not when he’s—”

“ _Nothing_ is _exactly_ what you’re going to do,” Sensei shoots back. “You drag that exorcist brat into this, and those shiki of his barge in and start raising a havoc, that youkai will absolutely catch wind of it. If it loses its nerve, it’ll flee without lifting the curse, and then Tanuma _will_ die. Would you risk that?”

Takashi opens his mouth, closes it again, feeling distinctly nauseous. His fingers tighten around Tanuma’s slack ones. Tanuma doesn’t stir.

“Anyhow, even if the creature doesn’t flee, I doubt that boy could accomplish much. Even he’s not so dense as to think he could remove the mark himself, and those shiki wouldn’t be able to turn up anything that Hinoe couldn’t. Even she hasn’t found the bastard yet.” Sensei flicks back a strand of coppery hair out of the face of his current human form. “Anyways,” he continues, briskly. “Leave the searching to Hinoe and the others. _My_ best tactic is to stick by the two of you, and yours is to _stay put_. When that nuisance finally shows its face, I’ll handle it.” Sensei picks at the hem of the uniform skirt draped over his pale knees with a kind of restless disinterest. “I look forward to it.”

Takashi casts a glance at Tanuma’s pallid face. Even in sleep his expression is taut. The cannula they’d put on him lies just a bit crooked under his nose, and Takashi reaches over to gently push it back into place with two fingers. He thinks he hates the sight of it. “But,” he says, eventually. “If he, um.” He pauses, has to take a steadying breath before he can make himself continue. “If that youkai doesn’t come back in time, before h-he—”

“Well, that’s what this place is for, isn’t it?” Sensei cuts him off, when his voice inevitably falters. He waves a hand up at the IV stand set up between Takashi and the bed. “Your healers can’t fix him, but they’ve brought the fever down, haven’t they?”

“Sort of,” Takashi mutters, following Sensei’s gaze to the clear drip-drip-drip inside the IV pouch. From what he’d been told, the drugs they’d administered had had little effect. What had been working, to a point, was physically cooling him down, with gel packs to his neck and under his arms and legs, and an odd heavy blanket with pouches of cold water inside dragged up over him. It was good for reining in a dangerous fever, but they couldn’t leave him like that indefinitely for fear of bringing the numbers _too_ far down. Trouble was, the fever kept creeping right back up again, so the whole process had had to be repeated a handful of times by now. And the times Takashi had been there to see it, Tanuma had been half-conscious and shuddering, quietly pleading for it to stop. Takashi feels his own mouth twist. “It’s making him miserable, though.”

“Miserable is better than dead,” Sensei says, flatly. Takashi winces. He really has nothing to say to that.

Sensei sighs, sweeping a long-fingered hand around the room at large. “Just let them keep puttering around and fussing over him. All of that poking and prodding they’re doing might be useless, if it’s some human illness they’re searching him for, but this is the place where humans are taken when they’re sick, isn’t it? He may as well stay. I can’t think of anywhere better he ought to be.”

Takashi’s eyes stray once more to the bed. They’d left his torso bare; there was really no point in covering him up when they were doing all they could to cool him down. Which leaves the curse—and the size it’s become—on full display, the smattering of bandages and monitor wires almost accentuating more than concealing it. It’s reached well beyond his chest now, curled around his sides over his ribs, dipped down and across his abdomen, stretched up to touch the well of his throat. At the center of it all, not quite sitting over his heart but not so far off, the lines all mash into each other and run together into whole patches of solid black. Like roots, Takashi thinks, all choking each other out. And he’s suddenly, harrowingly reminded of that sakura painting, of barren branches spreading across his wall, of the chill that sat in his lungs and the persistent cough that clung to him for weeks, long after the matter had been sorted and the youkai taken her leave.

And with that, his gaze is pulled straight back to the tube tucked between Tanuma’s nose and lips, and god, he’s so pale. “If,” Takashi says, very quietly, “that youkai doesn’t come back, before, ah, h-he—”

“It will,” Sensei says, crossing his arms over his chest. “Trust me. And I personally cannot wait to give this audacious creature a piece of my mind.” He closes his eyes and tilts his head back, long strands of tawny hair standing out starkly against the white wall. “—Let me know when I can be a cat again. These chairs are uncomfortable.”

They lapse into silence after that. Takashi had waited to have this talk with Sensei, until Tanuma-san had left to pick some things up from home and have a quick shower. But Sensei had quickly shot down the idea of Takashi himself doing anything, or of getting any more outside help. And he was _right_ , the logic was perfectly and infuriatingly sound, and it was all Takashi could do right now to just sit and wait. But it’s left him feeling worse and more restless than before to hear it vocalized, and there’s nothing more to say on the matter.

He isn’t expecting Tanuma to wake up in the minutes that follow; the fever isn’t quite dangerous at the moment, but he’s still pretty thoroughly sedated, and he looks to be all but lifeless, lying there. Takashi starts when his gaze drifts back to the bed after an indeterminate amount of time spent staring at the same spot on the tile floor, and Tanuma’s watching him, eyes half-mast.

“Oh! Ah...hi.” He stands so quickly it makes his head spin, and drags the chair none too quietly over and around so it’s right beside and facing the bed before sitting back down. Behind him he hears a quiet scoff.

“Hi,” the response is soft and vague. He’s not quite smiling, he looks like he’s still trying to remember just how his facial muscles work, but his eyes are gentle with recognition. Takashi’s hands hover for just a moment halfway to the bed, indecisive, before he finally settles on unfastening the strap holding his friend’s wrist down against the bed rail. Before he can finish, Tanuma’s hand twitches and flexes, fingertips brushing up against the little stuffed toy lying on the bed near his hip. His forehead scrunches. “Wha—”

“Oh.” Takashi scoops up the toy and holds it up so Tanuma can see it. It’s a little black bear in a baseball cap and jersey, a local mascot, old and obviously well-loved. “Nishimura brought it for you.” He smiles faintly. “He, um. He told me to tell you he’s sorry and that he wanted to get you something better but he’s out of allowance money. But Kitamoto said he’s had this since he was five.” He sets the bear down beside Tanuma’s pillow and sets back to work freeing his hand.

Tanuma does manage a smile at that, wobbly and slow but genuine. “That’s r’lly kind…”

“Yeah.” Takashi finally frees his hand, and takes it in both of his own, thumbs running slowly over the very slight indents the cuff had left on the skin of his wrist. The cuff was padded, and the straps had not at all been tight, but he still hates that it’s necessary to use them. Still, he hasn’t stopped trying to claw at his skin, or struggle against the cold packs, when he’s not too sedated to do so. Or, concerningly, a few hours ago, when Takashi hadn’t been here because Touko-san had come to take him out to lunch in order to give him an hour’s change of setting, Tanuma had apparently woken up in a complete panic and tried to launch himself up and out of the bed completely. Takashi still doesn’t know what that was about, he was asleep by the time Takashi returned and he’s been asleep until just now. But right this very second is not the time to question him about it.

“Nishimura’s gonna come by after school,” he continues, lacing their fingers together, Tanuma’s palm cold and clammy against his own. The permission to do that much was hard-won, because apparently his mom had been furious about him having disappeared for several hours past the time when he was supposed to be home on Sunday, when he’d gone with them to bring Tanuma here and sat with Takashi in the waiting room only to be sent home before even being able to see him. The following day at school he’d looked every bit as much of an insomniac wreck as Takashi had felt, talked disconcertingly little all day, and had fallen dead asleep on Kitamoto’s shoulder at lunch. When he’d come yesterday, he’d been able to stay for the least amount of time out of any of them, and he hadn’t gotten to see Tanuma awake, but he’d stuck right beside the bed the entire time with his hand on Tanuma’s, something uncommonly fierce in his eyes.

“Taki and Kitamoto will come, too,” Takashi adds, gaze finally shifting from the little stuffed bear back to Tanuma’s dull eyes. “As soon as school’s out.”

“‘Mm...kay,” Tanuma says, dreamily, but a few seconds later, his brows scrunch up again, and he frowns. “W-wait, school? Don’t you have—”

“Yes,” Natsume says, simply. “I didn’t go.”

Tanuma blinks. “Oh.” He looks for an instant as though he wants to say something more to that, but also rather like he can’t force his brain to string the words together properly.

He’d intended to go to school, even if he hadn’t wanted to. He’d even gone yesterday, rose easily in the morning because he hadn’t gotten a second of sleep after coming home from the emergency room that night, knowing that he needed to go to tell Taki what was happening anyhow. But last night, exhaustion had finally knocked him flat and he’d slept like the dead despite himself. His alarm hadn’t woken him in the morning, nor had Touko-san calling him for breakfast. She’d let him sleep, and when he finally did wake on his own, stumbling red-faced and disheveled into the kitchen in his uniform, she didn’t even mention school to him. She just showed him the bentos she’d made for both him and for Tanuma’s dad, cupped the side of his face, and told him she’d go with him to the bus stop into town as soon as he’d changed out of his uniform and had some breakfast. He’d just nodded, dazed, eyes stinging a bit, and gone right back upstairs to get ready. She’d gone with him to the hospital, even visited Tanuma herself—and the face she’d made when she’d seen him lying there was hard to look at, and Takashi had wondered vaguely if his own face over the last few days had looked anything like that, to her. She’d stayed in the area and run some errands, taking Takashi out to a pasta place a few blocks away for lunch before heading home. She’d said to call if he thought he’d be back late, but the fact that she’d sent him with a packed dinner suggested that she didn’t expect anything different.

“Quite the delinquent you’re becoming, skipping school _on purpose_ ,” Sensei drawls, over his shoulder.

Tanuma’s gaze slides towards the direction of the voice, and Takashi leans to the side so he can see. “Wh-who’s…”

“It’s Sensei,” Takashi supplies, not expecting Tanuma to recognize him immediately, especially when it looks like he’s having trouble making his eyes focus on anything not within a meter of his face. “No cats allowed in here. He kept having to hide and got sick of it.”

“Oh,” is all Tanuma says, once more, but now that Sensei’s leaned in a bit closer, sharp chin now resting on his elbows on the arm of his chair, there is a dim spark of recognition in his eyes. “Hi.”

“Apparently, if anyone asks, I’m Nana, and I’m in your year,” Sensei says, sounding bored. “Though I’m not sure why it matters that much.”

“What _does_ matter is that you’re in a uniform in the middle of the school day,” Takashi tells him, tiredly. “I told you to change your clothes. People will ask questions.”

Sensei shrugs, unbothered. “The nurses have seen me already. Besides, I’m perfectly comfortable being a delinquent.”

“...Nana?” Tanuma echoes, after a moment, as though it was the only word he’d absorbed over the last thirty seconds or so. His eyes are more or less trained on Takashi’s face, but his pupils don’t look quite right, too wide, too flat.

“Oh. Um.” Takashi’s brain stalls at the question. He hadn’t give it much conscious thought, the name had rolled off his tongue effortlessly when he’d had to introduce this apparent stranger of a fellow high schooler to Tanuma-san and then again to Touko-san. “It’s. That’s the name of a classmate from elementary school. She shared her lunches with me, sometimes. Just the first name I thought of, I guess.”

As soon as the words leave him, Takashi has a sudden, lurching urge to pluck the words right back out of the air and swallow them back down again. He fidgets in his seat, just slightly, as his rational mind catches up with the jolt of panic. It’s not _important,_ it has absolutely _no_ bearing on the problem at hand. An inane detail that he’d (voluntarily) offered up, about a person who’d been kind in the past when others had been...less so. He swallows hard, pulls a grin that’s small and brittle. The moment passes.

Behind him, Sensei lets out a longsuffering huff and twists around in his seat, lanky elbows now resting on the back of Natsume’s chair. “You look dreadful, you know,” he observes. “I hope you’re not planning on keeling over and letting this thing win anytime soon. I don’t want to give it the satisfaction.”

“ _Sensei,_ ” Takashi hisses, ignoring the way the words unsettle his stomach. He can’t very well smack him on the nose, much as he wants to, not when he’s in this form, so he settles for a halfhearted elbow jab. “What he _meant_ was, how are you feeling?”

“I meant just what i said,” he says, then rolls his eyes at Takashi’s warning look. He flicks another silky strand of hair off his forehead, and says, “Fine. _How are you feeling_ , then?”

“Mm…” Again, it takes far too long for Tanuma to realize he’s being asked anything at all, and even longer for him to piece together an answer. “‘M feeling...not...much?” He looks unsure, and so exhausted, when his eyes meet Takashi’s, then. “Hurts a l-little but...mostly ‘s just...fuzzy.”

“That’s okay,” Takashi tells him, squeezing his hand. “They’ve got you on some painkillers, that’s probably why.” He tells himself very firmly, at any rate, that that’s the reason.

“Ah,” Tanuma says, and manages very faintly to squeeze Takashi’s fingers back. “...’nd how’re you?”

Beside him Sensei snorts, and Takashi feels his own touch of incredulity at the question, given that he’s not the one in a hospital bed. But he smiles, gently, and his other hand lights on Tanuma’s upper arm. “I’m fine.” And that’s a patent lie, even if it’s a reflexive one, and even in Tanuma’s current state he’s got to know that. So he adds, because he knows what information Tanuma would be likely to be after, “Between your dad and Touko-san and Shigeru-san everyone’s making sure I’m eating enough and resting enough.”

“...good,” Tanuma gives him a wan smile, eyelids already starting to droop.

“And all your friends keep bringing him sweets.” Sensei pokes Takashi’s shoulder. “I’ve got to say I approve of that.”

“That’s because you keep eating them all.” Takashi sighs. “Yesterday Kitamoto brought some chocolates that his sister made, and I didn’t even get to try one.”

“It’s my payment,” Sensei says, with a wholly unapologetic shrug. “I’m working double time to guard both your hides right now, I’ll remind you.”

“You’re just sitting here.”

“Ingrate. I’ll swallow you whole before that creature even gets the chance to—”

“Um,” Tanuma’s voice is very soft, but Sensei gives over his tirade anyhow. “H-how’s Dad?”

“He’s all right,” Takashi tells him. “He’s worried, but they’ve been letting him sleep here with you, so Sensei’s been keeping him safe, too. He went back to your house to pick some stuff up. Misuzu’s still keeping an eye out near your house in case the youkai shows up, I think, so he’ll be fine. He’ll be back soon.” Takashi’s got the sneaking suspicion that Tanuma-san might be picking up some materials for a purification or the like. He can’t say he likes the idea, not if the youkai were to catch on view him as some kind of a threat, or even as an annoyance, but he’s not quite yet sure how to broach the subject with him, either.

“O...kay…” Tanuma says, and his gaze drifts off a bit, but Takashi can see the gears turning very, very slowly behind his eyes, like he’s mucking through the fog in his brain to piece together something crucial. “W-wait…” His eyes snap back to Takashi’s suddenly, and they’re a little wider, a little clearer.

“What’s wrong?”

“H-he was. Scared. Earlier...d-dunno when...yesterday? O-or today, I d-don’t know…”

Takashi blinks. “Your dad? Um. He seemed okay just a little while ago.” Well. To say he was _scared_ wasn’t inaccurate, not when his son was so sick, but there hadn’t been anything markedly different about his behavior that Takashi had noticed.

But Tanuma’s shaking his head, the movement jerky, distress mounting in his expression. “...was...something. There w-was something...bad, I think. He g-got scared ‘cause I was scared ‘cause there was...was... _bad._ ” Takashi can see the whites of his eyes all the way around, now. “I can’t...I don’t remember…” he whispers.

Before he even realizes it, Takashi’s hand has moved to cup Tanuma’s cheek. His lips are trembling, and Takashi hopes he’s just imagining that they look a little blue.

“I wondered, when they said he’d tried to jump right out of bed, earlier,” Sensei mutters. “Nothing’s here, nothing’s _been_ here, or I’d know it. But with the size of that mark, it wouldn’t surprise me if he was seeing or hearing things, by now.”

Takashi feels nauseous.

“Can’t remember…” Tanuma’s saying, chest rising and falling far too fast. “Why c-can’t I—”

“That’s okay. It’s okay if you can’t.” Takashi tries for a soothing tone but is sure he misses by a mile. He brushes his thumb along Tanuma’s cheekbone, avoiding the ridge of the cannula as best he can.

Another shake of the head, and tears in his eyes, now. “N-no, I—”

“You’re safe, brat,” Sensei cuts him off, voice clear and decisive. He leans even farther forward, fully into Tanuma’s line of vision. “You, and Natsume, and the priest. You’re all safe. For the moment, at least. Don’t underestimate me.”

“H-huh…?”

Takashi swipes along the darkened dip below Tanuma’s eye, catching a loose tear or two, his chest aching. “Sensei’s right,” he says, gently. “We’re safe. You should close your eyes, now. Can you do that?”

For a long moment, Tanuma just stares, jaw working soundlessly, pupils overdilated. But at long last, he complies. He’s not relaxed, not by a longshot, but he’s turned his cheek into Takashi’s hand a little, and Takashi’s shoulders slump.

“I can read to you,” he offers. “Shigeru-san gave me a book to take along today. I don’t know what it’s about, though. I didn’t really look at it.”

The sound Tanuma makes could be one of assent, but it’s so tiny and barely escapes his throat so it’s hard to say.

Over his shoulder, Takashi hears a huff, and a second later, the sound of his bag being rifled through. He glances behind him. “What—”

Sensei holds up the book, a weathered paperback whose title Takashi vaguely recognizes from the bookshelf in the living room, looking very put-upon. “You’ve got no free hands to hold it with, do you?” He turns the book over, eyes skimming the back cover without much enthusiasm. “Some kind of mystery novel, then.” He flips to the first page, clears his throat. “Fair warning, though, if I don’t know the kanji, I’m just going to make something up.”

His smile feels reed-thin, but unforced. “Okay.”

***

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next will be Taki, I think, and some steps towards resolution. 
> 
> Come yell at me on tumblr @owletstarlet. :)


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tooru likes to think that she's kept her composure pretty well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for the wait, though this is the longest chapter so far! Important to note beforehand here that in the manga, Sasada's not in the picture, as she moved to a different city at the end of her introduction arc. Unfortunately for Taki, this story's set in the manga rather than the anime, because if Sasada were around I'm certain she'd stick very close to Taki and help to make all this a little easier to bear.
> 
> Also! Please go look at the end of the previous chapter if you haven't looked recently! @fmobbuarts on tumblr did a commission art of the youkai and it is Rad.

“It’s chocolates again, tonight. I had lots of ingredients left over, so I hope that’s all right,” Tooru says, to the empty air of her own kitchen. “Benio, was it?”

No response. The paper circle she’d laid out on the kitchen chair lies perfectly undisturbed. Which, fleetingly and absurdly, has her feeling relieved; she ought not be nervous when she chose to set it out in the first place.

It’s not likely that any of the youkai who have been asked to guard her house will come inside, though, not after Sensei enclosed all of Grandfather’s patchwork wards around the house itself within a single, proper barrier. A powerful ayakashi could pass through it if they so desired, he’d told her, hence the guard outside, but it’d apparently be more of a hassle than it was worth for anyone not actively trying to break in and devour her.

Tooru’s been leaving out the sweets regardless. She sets them out on the side doorstep in the evenings, just beyond the reach of Sensei’s barrier. And every morning, without fail, the plate is empty. She doesn’t bother setting any aside, at this point, at least not for any human mouths. Some she saves for Sensei, and the rest go straight onto the dish and out the door. At least they’re certain to all be eaten, that way.

(She’s had little appetite, herself, lately, least of all for sweets. She’s under no illusion that Natsume has, either, though he thanks each time all the same before quietly tucking them away into his bag where Sensei will get to them within minutes. It hadn’t gone over much better, with Nishimura and Kitamoto, either. Nishimura had actually looked a little green when she’d placed the bag in his hands, a few days ago, and that was a definite and concerning first for him, when offered chocolate. Kitamoto had thanked her with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes, and when he’d opened his locker to put them away she’d caught a glimpse of the ever-growing stack of folders and notes he’d collected his class rep for assignments that were not his own.

Tooru doesn’t bring them sweets after that.)

It takes three full minutes standing over the saucepan before she realizes she’s forgotten to turn on the burner.

It does occur to her, another couple minutes later as she’s pouring simmering cream from the hot pan over melting chunks of chocolate, that perhaps this isn’t the best task for a distracted mind and sleep-deprived body. But it’s this, or being inevitably sucked right back into making talismans all night. And after showing up yesterday to meet Natsume at the hospital with a thick wad of gauze wound around her sliced-open palm, the result of a bleary-eyed mishap with a box-cutter, Tooru thinks that Natsume at least would prefer it if she gave it a rest with the talismans for awhile.

(They’re not doing much, anyhow. Nothing that Sensei’s not doing already. And Tanuma’s not woken up for two days, now.)

It’s just as well. At least the chocolates will be snatched up before morning.

She’s begun humming, at some point. Some pop song she doesn’t remember the title of. The sound of it is a bit too high, too fast and breathy to be casual, a little jarring in the otherwise complete silence of the room but still somehow not loud enough.

Coming to a decision, she rinses her hands, double checks that nothing will catch fire if she leaves the room for a moment to fetch the radio from her bedroom. She gives the circle one last long look on the way out, before flipping it face down and laying it on the table. It’s not helping her nerves.

She does feel legitimately better a few minutes later, with a few more lights and the radio switched on, some warm lively tune on a low volume from the first pop station she could find. And, perhaps childishly, she’d shut the door and drawn the curtains tight, so there’s no darkness or even shadowy spaces whatsoever to be caught out of the corner of her eye.

And it _is_ childish, she thinks; it’s _stupid,_ because _she’s_ not in danger, Natsume wouldn’t let her be. The creature’s not out for _her_ blood, never hurled its terrifying curse at _her_.

But somehow, all it’d taken was just hearing that word, _curse_ , in Natsume’s hushed voice that afternoon at school, for her mind to come to a screeching halt. She was very careful not to let it show, she’d had a lot of practice biting back that particular, familiar-tasting panic, and it was the last thing Natsume needed to deal with at the moment.

But the second she walked through her own front door that same night, it was so, so hard to breathe.

And this, right now, feels all too familiar as well. It’s not all bad, she thinks, spooning ganache into plastic molds (snowflake-shaped, today, and wildly inappropriate for the season but pretty and the only ones she hasn’t used yet), singing along a little louder to the chorus of a song she’s never heard before tonight. This was what she used to do, got good at doing, those nights she’d come back late, exhausted from wandering and drawing circle after circle but unable to sleep all the same. She couldn’t create safety, but she could little place to hide for awhile, a moment of tenuous rest.

She pops the spoon into her mouth, when the chocolates are finished and cooling. It burns her tongue a little, but it’s good; it’s hard to really mess up the taste unless you scald the milk. Maybe she’ll add some orange extract, next time.

The clatter of the spoon when she drops it into the sink nearly stops her heart.

She thinks she’ll bring her futon into kitchen, tonight.

***

Tooru does like to think that outside her own house, at least, she’s kept her composure pretty well. It’s been a near thing, at times, when she’s so frightened for both her friends. But, for Natsume, his very worst fear has been dredged up and thrown right in his face. He’s doing as well as anyone could possibly expect him to, and better than Tooru thinks she might be if she were him. And he’s certainly being looked after, by the Fujiwaras, by Tanuma’s dad, by Sensei and so many others Tooru can’t see. But Natsume hasn’t been to school in three days, now, and when she comes to meet him in the afternoons there’s something so brittle in the way holds himself, smiles worn too thin. It’s the least Tooru herself can do to not fall to pieces in front of him.

But it catches up with her eventually, and when it does it’s in an unfortunately public place. She’s on the bus to the hospital after school, forehead pressed against the window and thinking about whether she should pick up some miso from the supermarket that night, and how much time she’ll have left over to study for her Civics test. And when the tears start, it’s out of nowhere, and it’s jarring. Then, frustrating, because they don’t _stop_. And the harried-looking mom and her little son seated a few rows up are peering over at her, now. She fumbles with the buckles of her bag to pull out her handkerchief, eyes burning, and bites the inside of her cheek hard, because _get a grip, people are staring_. And, in any case, Natsume’s bound to see if her eyes are red. And somehow, that thought just makes it worse, her chest constricting as she stares down at her own hands.

And she’d gotten so good at curbing this sort of thing, too, when lives literally depended on her ability to fade into the periphery-- the less noticeably she could conduct herself, the more forgettable she could become, the safer others would be from the curse woven into her voice.

A fat lot of good all that practice is doing her now.

Seconds later, she starts when something soft and bright lands squarely on her lap. It’s a hand towel, she realizes, blinking her burning eyes until she can properly focus on it. A child’s, square and small, patterned with cartoon characters. A few dried rice grains cling to one edge of it. And before she can so much as raise her head she finds herself quite suddenly, and quite literally, nose-to-nose with a child.

He’s tiny, so much so that he can’t be much more than a toddler, she thinks. Then again, Tooru hasn’t spent quite enough time around children in her lifetime to be a fair judge; he could just be small in general. His brows are scrunched together beneath his bowl-cut fringe, his bottom lip sticking out in intense concentration as he stares her down.

“You shouldn’t cry,” he says. “Why are you crying?”

At that, Tooru finds herself at a complete loss. “Ah, that’s…” her voice falters, and she finds her eyes drawn to the grain of rice stuck firmly to his cheek. He smells faintly of tuna.

“ _Haruto._ ” The boy’s mother is halfway out of her seat now, gesturing sharply for him to return to her. She looks distinctly mortified. He ignores her, easily, and to Tooru’s surprise, he promptly clambers into the empty seat beside her.

“Oh, um.” Tooru pulls her school bag into her lap just in time to keep it from getting sat on. “...Hello.” Her voice cracks on the word, just a bit, more from disuse than anything. But the little crease between the boy’s eyes deepens.

He’s kneeling on the seat, facing her, leaning forward on his knees to get a good look at her face. Tooru wonders vaguely if she ought to do something about that; if the bus hits a bump, Haruto is _so_ little that he might just go flying.

“You shouldn’t cry,” he repeats, after a moment, perfectly decisive. “I hate crying.”

 _That_ startles a watery little chuckle out of her. “Ah...me too, sometimes.”

“Here,” he says, before scooping up the hand towel, and firmly patting her cheek with it. She thinks she feels the bumps where the bits of rice are stuck to the material.

“I-it’s alright,” she begins, bemused. “You don’t need to—”

“ _Ha_ ruto.”

Tooru looks up to find Haruto’s mother right in front of them, now. She looks equal parts embarrassed and exasperated, and Tooru gets the impression that this is far from the first time something like this has happened.

“Do  _not_ bother people on the bus.” She swoops in to take him by the forearm. “Please excuse us,” she adds to Tooru.

Before Tooru can respond, Haruto’s yanking his arm out of his mother’s grip. “ _No._ ” He crosses his arms. “I’m gonna sit _here._ Oneechan is _crying_ ,” he adds, as if that decides the matter.

Tooru feels herself flush at that; it’s not just that it’s obvious she’s in tears but that it’s likely just as obvious _why_. The most frequented stop along this bus route is the one in front of the hospital, and every day she’s gone so far the majority of the people riding with her have gotten off at this stop as well. It doesn’t seem to be the case for this woman; she’s got a few grocery bags over in her now vacant seat, but she can probably deduce pretty easily where Tooru’s headed.

“Let’s _go,_ Haruto.” She takes him by the hand this time, and the gesture’s not at all rough, but there’s a clear warning in her eyes.

Haruto doesn’t budge, sticks his chin out. “Oneechan is crying,” he repeats, and the look he gives _her_ holds an absolute promise to cause a scene if she does not back down.

Tooru glances between them, unsure. This unspoken battle of wills between a grown woman and her small child might, in an objective way, been a bit fascinating to watch, if she herself wasn’t the cause of it. Eventually, carefully, she says, “It’s really no trouble. I’ll be getting off soon anyhow.”

That’s all the permission Haruto needs to plop right down in the seat, shooting an immensely satisfied look at his mother. The woman just sighs, shoots Tooru a final apologetic look, and returns to her seat. Tooru is sure from the ramrod straightness of her back in the seat that her ears are pricked, ready to haul her child away the second it becomes necessary.

Haruto’s fingers are warm and a little sticky where they now rest on top of Tooru’s hand. His other hand has found her upper arm, and he’s rubbing up and down in an almost mechanical way. “It’s okay,” he’s saying, over and over, in what sounds like a very practiced tone, or one that he has heard many times over. “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay--” Like a chant, she thinks, meant to banish all her sorrows.

But after about the twentieth _it’s okay,_ he cuts himself off, suddenly, his eyes going round. “Oh!” He strikes his little palm with his fist. “I know what’ll make it better!” And with that, he clambers down out of the seat and dashes back over to his mother. Tooru can’t quite see what he’s doing; rummaging around for something, maybe, but his mother looks equal parts bewildered and exasperated.

She’s out of her seat again, soon. “Haruto, don’t--”

But Haruto’s soon headed back towards her, and Tooru has to clamp a quick hand over her mouth to stifle a startled giggle. He’s got a full two-liter bottle of tea in tow, clearly from his mother’s grocery bags, which really looks about as big as he is as he struggles to haul it down the aisle, his arms shaking and a determined scowl on his face. His mother leans in to intercept, and he somehow manages to dodge her, with a very emphatic “ _No,_ I can _do it myself_ ,” as though that’s the only problem here.

When he finally makes it back to Tooru, he manages with a herculean effort to dump the bottle onto the seat he had just vacated.

“Oh,” is all Tooru says, while Haruto’s bent in two, trying to catch his breath. “Um...thank you?”

When he straightens back up, still panting a little, he’s got a triumphant gleam in his eyes. “We got it at the store today. I didn’t even know they _made_ bottles of tea this big, it’s the biggest I ever  _saw_ before, and guess what? We got _two_ of them. So you can have this one. Mom gives me tea when I’m sad sometimes, and it makes me happy again.”

“...thank you,” she repeats, equal parts touched and confused about to handle this new development. Especially considering that his mother has returned, and if she looked embarrassed before, she is _mortified_ now.

“...Haruto,” she repeats, and there’s a note of helplessness to it now, watching her child distribute her groceries to strange distraught teenagers on the bus.

“You should have some now,” he says, eagerly, resting his hands on both her knees and blatantly ignoring his mother. “I hope you got a cup because I don’t have one.”

***

“...Anyhow, would you like some tea?” Tooru holds up the paper cups she had taken from the water fountain outside Tanuma’s room. “I usually just make it myself at home, but I’d hate to waste it.”

“Oh.” Natsume blinks, but accepts the offered cup. “Sure. Thank you.”

It really hadn’t occurred to her until she started getting a few odd looks that it might be a peculiar thing to do, lugging a bottle of tea so large it wouldn’t even fit in her bag around the intensive care unit. But Natsume hadn’t really seemed to take notice, at least not until she explained why she had it. He’s not particularly taking notice of much at all today, it seems, unless it’s the words of a doctor or nurse. Otherwise, he looks so pale and worn-out that he’d fall over at the slightest nudge. He’d seemed like he was in a trance when she’d led him by the hand from the room out to the small garden on the hospital grounds, and sat him down on the bench where they are now.

When Tooru fills his cup, he just stares down at the surface of the liquid between his fingers, glinting amber in the sun of the late afternoon, for a good several seconds as if he’s forgotten what he’s supposed to do next. He doesn’t drink until Tooru pours her own and takes a sip.

It’s when he downs it all in barely two gulps that she frowns.

“Let’s get you a water bottle on the way back inside, okay?” She refills his cup, trying to keep the chastising note out of her voice but sure she’s not quite managing it. “Here.” She offers the bottle once again, and the way he holds out his cup is near-mechanical, like his body at least is aware of what it needs even if his brain hasn’t quite caught up yet. He gives her a small, dazed nod, and the second cup is gone nearly as quickly as the first.

“Will you stay much longer today?” she asks, after a moment.

“Mm, no,” he murmurs, staring down into the cup once more. “Shigeru-san will meet me here when he gets off work and we’ll go home together. Touko-san was here until just a little while ago but she needed to pick up groceries.” It’s clear from his tone that this arrangement is not optional, and that he is not thrilled about it.

“Ah, okay.” She feels a bit foolish, then, for having worried that Natsume wasn’t being properly looked after, on multiple fronts. She’ll still get him that water, though. “Well I’ll stay until visiting hours are done.”

His eyes flick towards hers. “You don’t have to—”

“Neither do you,” she counters, easily. “But I want to. So get some rest, please.”

He nods, still peering over at her through unkempt fringe. “Thank you,” he murmurs. Then, after a moment, “...are you alright? Ah, earlier, you looked a bit…” He trails off, like he’s not certain if he’s supposed to bring it up. When Tooru explained about Haruto she hadn’t mentioned that she’d cried, but exhausted or not, Natsume’s still got a functioning set of eyes.

She swirls the tea around in her own cup. It’s more bitter than she likes, but it’s nice to sip something cool after the heat of the day anyhow. “I’m alright now,” she tells him, and holds up her cup. “Oddly enough, this did help.” She grins, and Natsume returns it, albeit faintly.

It takes a moment for her to work up the nerve to ask, “Any news?”

When she’d arrived, of course Tanuma-san was there to greet her, eyes tired and voice gentle when he told her that there hadn’t been any changes, the fever wasn’t budging anymore and he still hadn’t woken. She knew from Natsume the day before that at this point the staff were throwing around terrifying words like _brain damage_ and _organ failure_ and if that made her nauseous then she could scarcely imagine what that must be putting Tanuma-san through to hear. Soon after she’d come, though, he’d stepped out--apparently to speak to a doctor and then pick up some things from the convenience store, but she suspected it was more for the sake of letting them speak freely.

Sensei was there, still in the form of a brassy-haired high schooler and napping in a chair with his head tilted back against the wall, lanky arms crossed loosely over his stomach. Which of course was all kinds of odd in its own way, odder still that he hadn’t stirred in the least to talk to Natsume once Tanuma-san had left.

But once she was there, she found very quickly that she herself couldn’t muster any words at all. Not when her eyes kept getting pulled right back to the bed. Tanuma looked...well, _not_ like Tanuma, lying there. What he looked like was a vacant body, ashen face slack and chapped lips parted, attached to a nerve-wracking tangle of medical equipment all taped over the skin he’d torn up himself. She hadn’t actually seen him awake since he’d been here, at least not awake enough to register her presence, and it’d been nearly a week now. Her first thought today--and she really wishes it hadn’t been--was, _at least he’s not in pain anymore._ Enough people had said those exact words about Grandfather, and it being true hadn’t made it any better, it didn’t then and it doesn’t now. At least back then it was something you’d expect to hear in regards to an elderly relative; it feels inherently wrong to think it about a high school friend.

Of course Tooru couldn’t see what was causing it, but she _could_ see Natsume--the fear that bled into expressions usually kept so carefully neutral, his grip on Tanuma’s hand. Today, even when he was trying to work on a math assignment (though in truth doing little but staring down at the notebook in his lap and absently doodling in the margins), his free hand still rested over Tanuma’s fingers. The small-talk about her school day had fizzled out in a minute or so, and all her returning questions froze on the tip of her tongue every time her eyes strayed back to Tanuma’s face. Again, and again, until she finally rose, and held her hand out to Natsume.

“It’s too odd,” she’d said, “to talk about him like he’s not here. Let’s go.”

It’s still odd, really, she thinks now. But at least Natsume seems to have regained the capacity for speech.

“The youkai’s not been found yet,” he says, more to the pebbles under his shoes than to Tooru. “Hinoe’s the most likely to track it down; she’s got ears everywhere. And Misuzu can cover the most ground, aside from Sensei. He’s even searched around some of the neighboring towns by now, but he hasn’t had any luck either. Sensei went out himself earlier too, to ask around, but. Nothing unusual. No youkai gone missing, nothing out of the ordinary.”

“I’ve had the news on, too, at home,” Tooru adds, scuffing her toe a little on the gravel underfoot. “Nothing stands out. No odd disappearances or anything like that.” Not that that’d be good at all, in itself, but for better or worse it’d still be information. Which was more than they had now.

“I think me and Tanuma are its only targets, right now,” he says. “I think it’s biding its time. Sensei said it has some strong abilities of concealment, but.” His shoulders slump. “If it’s using the curse to keep track of him, then the traces of a link that powerful should be enough to point the way back to wherever it’s hiding, at least a little. That’s what Hinoe thinks, anyways. So maybe it’s just too subtle to tell, but they’ve got nothing. We don’t know where it is.”

Tooru rests a hand on his arm. This is the most she’s heard him say in days, but she’s coming up empty on reassuring replies.

“And now they’re thinking they should transfer him to another hospital,” he adds, quietly. Tooru blinks, nonplussed.

“What? Where?”

“In the city. At the university hospital.” He tucks his arms around his chest, eyes fixed on the ground. “They don’t think they’ve got the proper resources to treat him here, because they can’t identify the illness.” His smile is small and bitter. “In a way, they’re right, but—”

“But it’d make everything worse,” Tooru finishes, dread curling in the pit of her stomach.

“Right. If the link’s not as strong as we think, or if the youkai gets confused and gives up…” A pause, and a halting breath. “It could’ve already given up, for all we know, and left the curse behind. Sensei doesn’t think that, but if h-he—” his voice peters out, and no more words follow.

Tooru bites the inside of her own cheek, hard. She turns to face him fully, places both hands on his shoulders. “We won’t let him get transfered,” she says firmly. “Okay? We’ll talk to Tanuma-san. You said he sort of knows this is a youkai problem anyways, right? He’ll believe you if you say it’s a bad idea.”

Natsume just nods, moon-eyed. She takes his hand in one of her own, his skin distinctly cool to the touch despite the weather. “It’s going to be alright,” she tells him. She has no idea whatsoever if that’s true, but feels she ought to say so, anyhow. “Sensei is going to take care of it. Tanuma-kun will get better.”  

Natsume doesn’t reply for a long time. She’s wondering if her hollow reassurance was a poor choice, after all, when he finally does speak.

“I...didn’t think,” he begins, and it’s like he’s sifting through the words so carefully, like they’re scattered among bits of shattered glass, “that I’d have to wonder about things I maybe ought to have told him.”

 _Oh,_ Tooru thinks. _Oh._

She squeezes his hand, turning over in her mind any possible responses to this. She doesn’t know that there _is_ a right thing to say. He meets her eyes, just briefly, before his gaze skitters away again.

She flips his hand over in hers. “ _I_ don’t think,” she offers, “that he wants you to feel that way. If he could he’d tell you that himself.”

“‘Course he would,” Natsume mutters, a little too despairing to be fond.

“It doesn’t do either of you any good,” she continues, absently twining their fingers together. “Look, there’s…” she falters for a moment, realizing this isn’t something she’s ever really said to him plainly. “There’s...probably things you feel like you can’t talk about, to us. He and I both know that. I don’t know if it’s for our own safety, or if you just don’t know how, or both.” He looks startled, at that, but she plows on. “ _But._ You have to know that he doesn’t hold that against you. He’s never been just sitting around waiting for you to tell him things, like it’s some kind of requirement you have to fill for him to stick around. He _will_ stick around. Unless you tell him not to. And _don’t_ you tell him not to,” she adds, sharply. “Don’t you dare. Not after all this. That’d hurt him worse than anything else you’re afraid of.”

It takes him so long to answer that she doesn’t think he’s going to. Then, very softly, “I don’t think I could. I’ve, um.” A pause, and his teeth worry at his lower lip. “I’ve thought about it, and...even with all this happening I’m not sure I ever could. That’s probably selfish.”

Relief wells up in Tooru’s chest at that. “It’s not.” She rubs the back of his hand with her thumb, over bluish veins standing out too starkly from the skin. “It’s _not._ ”

“Okay,” he whispers, and while it’s not entirely clear if he believes her, he doesn’t argue.

It takes a good extra minute or so of sitting in silence, Natsume nearly nodding off beside her as the setting sun washes the leaves and flowers gold around them, before Tooru can make herself put the rest of her thoughts into words.

“Ah, I think, though—” she starts, a bit too suddenly, because Natsume jolts back into awareness beside her with a full-body twitch.

And—oh, maybe this can wait, after all. Surely it’s just needless meddling at this point, and if the unthinkable happens she’s not sure she’ll be able to live with herself for having brought it up. But she’s got his attention, now, and really, with everything he’d just said, there’s no way it hasn’t been on his mind too.

“That, um. When he’s better, and he can listen to you, I think it’d be okay for you to let him know what he means to you. It’d be good.”

“Ah—”

“ _Exactly_ what he means to you, Natsume-kun,” she says, with a little smile.

He goes very still. Something like legitimate terror steals through round eyes, just for a moment, and Tooru aches for him.

“He...h-he doesn’t—” the denial is instantaneous, a little choked.

“He does,” Tooru cuts him off, kindly, but banking no argument. “He does. So. At least think about it.”

She needn’t have added that last part, she thinks guiltily, because after they’ve lapsed back into silence it’s quite apparent just how _much_ he’s  _thinking_ about it. His arm is trembling a bit where it’s pressed against hers, what little color he had to his face now gone. Tooru wonders if she ought to say something more, but she doesn’t want to stick her foot further in her mouth when it’s now clear that she should have left well enough alone on this matter, especially now. She’d wanted to comfort him, not send him to the brink of a panic attack when he was already so overdrawn. So she holds her tongue, rubs his back a little while the cut on her hand throbs, unable to take back her words but wishing very much that Shigeru-san would hurry up and come get him out of this place.

“Hm. Typical that you’d keep taking off on your own, even now, isn’t it?” a voice drawls, then, directly beside the bench and Tooru nearly jumps out of her skin. “Don’t blame me if you get gobbled up.”

“Wh—ah! Sensei!” Tooru yelps, and honestly, how is it even possible that even in human form his approach could be completely silent.

“...sorry,” is all Natsume says, though it seems to take an extra beat or two for him to even realize he’s being addressed. “Wait, is everything alright?” he adds, sitting up straighter, the swirling anxieties of a moment before now finding a sharp and tangible point of focus.

Sensei shrugs slender shoulders, then, abruptly, vanishes in a quick burst of thick white smoke. When it clears, the form of the high school student is gone, a portly cat blinking up at them from the gravel path in its stead.

“No change,” says a much more familiar voice. “That mark’s not grown in quite some time, either.” He hops up onto Natsume’s knees in a single bound, landing with a little grunt. “Ah, this is better, he sighs, wriggling around to get comfortable while Natsume’s hands light on his sides seemingly of their own accord. And Natsume’s not quite relaxed, Tooru thinks watching him, but he doesn’t seem so much anymore like a spring so tightly coiled it’s bound to snap, for the moment at least, his fingers curling in Sensei’s fur. She thinks she’ll have to thank Sensei later for his timely distraction.

“Those chairs are the worst,” Sensei’s griping, now. “Who’d even build something like that, honestly. I’m hungry, too. _Any_ how,” he says, with a slight glare up at Tooru when she goes to scratch his ears, “I came to check where you all had run off to without saying anything.”

Tooru’s hand freezes mid-air. “Wait, it wasn’t safe?” She casts an apprehensive glance back over her shoulder at the building. Tanuma’s room is just on the second floor; from out here she’s not sure which window is his but the room overlooks the garden. When they’d come out here yesterday for a quick stroll along with Touko-san, Sensei had stayed behind, looking distinctly disinterested in the prospect.

“No, I suppose it’s safe enough,” he concedes. “Misuzu’s closeby today, and it took all of two seconds to look out the window and check where you’d gone. Still.” His eyes narrow further. “Don’t make a habit of disappearing right now, either of you. Makes my job harder.”

“I’m sorry,” Tooru murmurs, but Natsume shakes his head.

“No, it was my fault,” he tells her, adding an appropriately penitent, “Sorry, Sensei.” Sensei just grumbles, and settles deeper into his lap.

“Wait, though,” he says, following Tooru’s earlier gaze over and back towards the building. “Is he really okay by himself right now? Or did Benio come to watch him yet?”

“Not yet,” Sensei replies, wholly unperturbed. “But the wards will hold just fine. Even without my own, there’s all those layers on layers of sutra now too, thanks to the priest. They’re not so strong on their own, and most of them were spoken more for healing or comfort than banishment purposes, but all stacked on top of one another like that? Blasted things are like tripwires. It’d give pause to any ayakashi with half its wits about it.”

“But...wouldn’t that give you difficulty too, then?” Tooru resumes her scratching, and Sensei moves his head slightly to direct her fingers to a specific spot just behind his left ear.

“Not particularly,” he replies. “To a point, at least, that priest knows what I am. And whether or not he’s aware of it, his intent towards me has altered how those incantations of his affect me. I mean,” he adds, haughtily, “not that something so crude could _really_ trouble a class of creature such as myself, but. I hardly notice them.”

“What happens when Benio comes?” she asks. She glances over at Natsume, who’s still got eyes trained on the building.

“She’ll prefer the hallway to the room, I’d say. If there were any real danger she’d still be able to get inside the room, if she absolutely needed. At any rate Misuzu will be watching from out here overnight.”

“That’s good,” she says, but she can’t help watching the building again now, too. “Ah...and, ask Benio if she liked the chocolates.”

“Eh?! Don’t give  _her_ chocolates, I’m the one doing the real work here.”

“Sensei,” Natsume mutters, but it’s a cursory threat, too tired to have any real heat to it.

“I brought you some, don’t worry,” she says, scratching under his chin now. “They’re still up in the room.”

Natsume sighs. “Don’t be taken in by him,” he says, swatting Sensei lightly on the back of the head. “Touko-san’s been packing sweets in my bag. He’s been eating them all.”

“As if they weren’t meant for me anyhow,” Sensei retorts. “And serves you right for leaving your bag unattended. Speaking of which, you shouldn’t be making a habit out of _that_ , either,” he says, pointedly. “It’s in the room right now, you left it.” He tugs his head out of Tooru’s reach to look back at Natsume, and the two share a loaded look that Tooru can’t quite grasp.

“Sorry, I—” he starts, then cuts off just as fast, as if the sound itself had been snatched right out of the air. His mouth hangs open, eyes going saucer-wide, hands frozen on Sensei’s back.

“...Natsume-kun?” Tooru reaches over, hesitant, hand hovering near his elbow.

“I know what to do,” he whispers, with a dazed kind of awe.

“What’re you muttering about, brat?”

But Natsume stands up, very suddenly, and Sensei goes tumbling off his lap with a startled squawk.

“Sensei, I _know what to do_ ,” he repeats, a fevered brightness to his eyes.

Tooru stands up herself. “What’s going on?”

“Taki,” he rounds on her, almost blurting out her name. “Ah—sorry, but I think need some things from your house.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come yell at me on tumblr @owletstarlet. Also! If tumblr goes belly-up with all their poorly implemented policy updates, I'm on the Natsume and apta-scans discord servers as twelvenervouscats, and my metas as well as my fics will probably surface on livejournal (@crazybeagle) until I can decide on a better place.


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